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Museums and the Web?


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Archives & Museum Informatics
2000

Pathways for Exchange and Learning: Extending the Museum via the Web

Session: Higher Education meets the Museum

This paper presents a rationale and a series of strategies for enlarging the geographic range of educational outreach, broadening the audience included, and enriching the learning experience effected by museums. A basic premise that will be articulated is that museums can be important players in the powerful (and powerfully complex) web of information that surrounds us and is available to anyone connected to the Internet. Essential to exploiting the potential of this "web of information" is the idea of moving ideas in multiple directions along the pathways of the Web.

The paper will argue that museums, with their inherent and historic relationship to tangible objects and visual materials, can contribute to the value of the Web in several ways. Most obviously, they can and are enlarging the overall pool of information by pouring visual data into it, making images available for a large spectrum of users. But much more importantly, museums can-and should-find ways to use such visual data as unique catalysts for learning in many disciplines. Real objects in museums often have a precious "don't touch" quality, are behind glass or beyond the barrier, and have been made by "another." The web can be used to soften if not displace these barriers. In addition, the standard principle of idea exchange in museums is one way: the viewer looks at the objects and receives information from them, the signage, and the docents. Via the Web, viewers can easily send as well as receive ideas; they can become a genuine part of the evolving process of selecting, saving, curating, and presenting.

As all museum professionals recognize, the artifacts and objects they steward become valuable learning instruments only when the conditions are created to stimulate the linking of ideas and the emotional and cognitive engagement of the viewers. In this presentation, I will present strategies for and successful examples of educational outreach via the Web.