Museophile: a community for museum e-commerce
Jonathan Bowen, South Bank University, United Kingdom
http://www.museophile.com/

Mini-Workshop: Museophile

Large national museums can afford to create their own on-line mass communication services and to undertake e-commerce activities themselves. However, for other museums, this can be a daunting prospect, both technically and financially. It is also likely to be much less effective. A solution could be to create an on-line museum community of small to medium sized museums who alone would struggle to make such an enterprise a success but who together, with suitable help, could rival the efforts of national museums. This mini-workshop examines existing example of museum e-commerce and facilities that could be used by museums. It then goes on to propose a possible infrastructure for museums wishing to take their initial steps in e-commerce at low cost and low risk.