Arab Region Virtual Museum
A country Model
Nahed K. Refaat
RITSEC
Egypt
Abstract:
The cultural heritage of the Arab region is fabulously rich. The region was the birthplace of human achievement in art, astronomy, medicine, geometry, mathematics, religion and philosophy, among others-truly the cradle of civilization: Preserving this heritage is crucial, not only to the region, but also to the world.
With the advances in information technology and communication, the Internet has grown to be one of the most important and effective means of dissemination and cultural exchange.
From that respect, and to maximize dissemination of cultural information, the Arab Region Virtual Museum (ARVM) is a pioneering initiative aiming at establishing a strong and unified Arab culture presence on the Internet.
ARVM is envisaged to include a historical background information about the region through which the visitor can virtually walk through the different civilizations by visiting the region's historical sites, supported with a directory of all Arab museums with their basic information
Additionally, the museum shall include selected objects from each museum for display. Objects shall be selected based on their representation of specific cultural elements of the region, to provide a wide coverage of the region's cultural heritage. It shall also accommodate a bulletin board whereby museums can announce their programs to the public, discussion group whereby museums experts in the region can share information & exchange experience.
RITSEC, in cooperation with the ICOM_ARAB organization have taken the initiative to create the nucleus of ARVM by creating a www site for the organization.
Introduction - Information Highway
With the technological, social and economic advances in the world today, forms of communication have changed and evolved resulting in better communication, closer relationships and more freedom of representation. The Information Highway represents a new phase in the technological and sociological evolution of humanity. Over the years computing power has moved from centralized mainframe computers with dumb terminals to personal computers and local area networks with a significant change in the way people communicated and accessed information, information decentralization. Today the networked computing, represented by the Information Highway gives control to end users instead of information centers within an organization. The Information Highway is composed of two main components; the Infra and the Info-structure. The Internet as the network of networks provides the backbone, or the basic communication infrastructure for the Information Highway, among other components. Whereas the Internet acts as a vehicle, the most important component in the Information Highway is the info-structure or the content.
The Internet became the new medium for sharing information, experiences, developing friendships, and building business relationships. It has evolved into a meeting place where vendors, buyers, spectators, travellers, researchers and all types of people meet for one purpose or another. The Information Highway has started to prove itself as a powerful medium for business, it represents a new market place with many channels of communication and interactions regardless of physical limitations such as geography, space or time. The transformation of the Internet from an educational and research medium to an all purpose medium has been encouraged and fostered by new developments in software, hardware and communication capabilities. Perhaps one of the most important developments in the area of software is the introduction of the World Wide Web concept and its supporting applications.
Social changes of the Information Highway era
The Internet provides a democratic environment, where everyone can participate and has a voice. Everyone can participate in discussions, access information at his convenience. People can interact with others without any prejudice, everyone is accepted solely based on his ideas and contribution.
From that perspective the Information Highway will radically change the way we learn, work, shop and play. Basically it will change the way of thinking and living, and shall give rise to new needs and demands, based on the capabilities and functionality inherent in it. It will change peoples', perception of learning, entertainment, and work.
The challenge is whether the info-highway will be able to meet the ever increasing needs and expectations that are increasing along the evolution of the Information Highway.
Culture on the Information Highway
Culture is the underlying factor in all human activities, an important component of human knowledge is based on cultural heritage. Countries and societies have different cultures that determine their behavior and activities. The preservation of national, regional and international cultural heritage and disseminating information about it is essential for the cultural continuity of any society. It is worth investigating how cultural heritage as a domain shall take advantage of the Information Highway, within the framework of the continuous change and evolution of technology.
What will be the impact of the Information Highway on the process of culture preservation, and most importantly, culture dissemination ? Is the Information Highway a replacement for the real life experience, will technological tools provide the same atmosphere and environment encountered in the real life ? Will the Information Highway replace the traditional forms of culture dissemination and change the learning process ? Will people revert to the Information Highway to visit countries and places of attraction at their own leisure ? These are just few of the questions raised with respect to the impact of the "Virtual World" concept created by the Information Highway.
How did cultural centers and institutions world wide react to this new wave? If we consider the number of International cultural institutions, museums and libraries with a significant presence on the Information Highway, or if we enumerate international collaboration, and project initiatives in this area, we can easily comprehend the trend and understand the huge potential and massive opportunities offered.
Internet presence of museums world wide became one of the priority issues discussed within the circles of international cultural institutions, developmental organizations and national regional and international bodies. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has declared its Internet policy as composing of two directions: Presence of museums on the Internet and presence of the ICOM itself on the Internet. ICOM has also published several white papers related to the museum and the Internet.
Using any search engine over the Internet like Yahoo with the term "Virtual Museum" yields a result of several hundreds of virtual museums from all over the world. Museums listed vary in the degree of information presentation, starting from just contact information, to full information about the museum and its collection. Similar to new waves in every discipline, to date there is no defined standard for museum representation method over the Internet. It is a matter of internal judgement as to the sort of information needed to establish a virtual museum. It is highly important to stipulate and formulate a common understanding for establishing museum presence on the Internet and the creation of a virtual museum. Upon reaching this consensus, museums need to adopt this understanding, redesign and adapt internal processes and prioritize activities, in relation to the new developments in technology and the huge potential offered.
The Virtual Museum
In order to create a Virtual Museum it is necessary to understand what is a museum, what are its functions, its role in culture continuation and social economic. The understanding of the above mentioned issues shall contribute towards determining the definition, content, objectives, and applicability of Virtual Museum.
What is a museum?
Museums are the storehouses of human knowledge, they document and illustrate different phases in the evolution of mankind history and development of nations from several perspectives.
The ICOM defined museums as "A non-profit making, permanent institution, in the service of society and its development, and open to the public which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for the purpose of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of man and his environment".
From this definition we can see that all museums' activities are basically to serve the museums' users
Who visits the museum?
These groups are characterized by their heterogeneity and difference in interest and backgrounds, but the common factor is their interest in the field of culture.
What are the benefits of visiting museums?
A wide range of benefits is gained from visiting museums, we can categorize them as follows:
These benefits and the wide range of exposure creates awareness and enriches visitors knowledge in the area of cultural heritage.
Defining the Virtual Museum
The term "Virtual Museum" has been used in different contexts to mean presenting information about a particular museum and its collections in a digital format, to be accessed electronically on the Internet. In that respect, as mentioned earlier, we can find hundreds of virtual museums from around the world displaying their collection over the Information Highway. We need to assess the validity of naming these exhibits virtual museums, as we need to look back to the definition, function and types of visitors to museums. We need, in the virtual cyberspace, to fully satisfy the basic requirements, and functions of a museum in order to be able to give it the name "virtual museum". Webster's new world dictionary defined the word virtual as "Being such practically or in effect, although not in actual fact or name". Hence, a virtual museum should practically satisfy the definition of a museum, and to a great extent transmit the effect of a museum's visit to the public.
Undoubtedly, this is a matter of great difficulty, trying to formulate an inclusive and representative definition of a virtual museum. In the area of information technology, all parameters are changing rapidly, evolution is fast, and what we define as state-of-the-art technology today shall become obsolete in two years time. Based on the definition of a museum, considering its functions and benefits. we can define a virtual museum as:
"A virtual cultural environment within which artifacts are exhibited in an electronic format to satisfy the needs of different groups of people"
The Virtual Museum shall not only display artifacts from the museum, it should simulate the real museum experience. Culturtainment is what the Virtual Museum offers, the visitor has the benefit of acquiring cultural information within an entertaining environment. In doing this a Virtual Museum shall, by all means, adapt and employ state-of-the-art technologies to achieve its goals and meet visitors expectations.
The Virtual Museum is dynamic in its nature, and content. Presentation need to be creative, useful and up to date, in order to continuously attract the user and provide him with valuable information.
Arab Region Virtual Museum (ARVM)
It is quite obvious that Arab presence over the Internet is minimal, the Arab region is lagging behind in this area, particularly in the field of culture. It is clearly noticed that the Arab presence over the Internet is mostly based on individual efforts undertaken by Information Technology professionals in the region, or by scholars living abroad who are triggered by their nationalistic feeling.
ARVM is a project initiated by the Regional Information technology and Software Engineering Center (RITSEC), with the objective to be implemented jointly with both Information Technology professionals and culture holding institutes in the Arab region.
Concept
Integrated regional cultural vehicle that will operate in the cyberspace to globalize the regional efforts in the area of culture dissemination
Mission
To play a catalytic organizational role for capitalizing on regional technical and cultural initiatives and capabilities to ensure a coherent position in the global information society.
Objectives
Services offered by the Virtual Museum
The value of the Virtual Museum is its content representation and depth of information provided. Information should be useful to different class of users, ranging from simple information that satisfies the requirements of the layman to highly specialized in-depth information to meet the need of professionals. With such diversity it is important that presentation of information be innovative and interesting. Hence, technicalities of the virtual museum should be transparent to the user, adding an immense pressure on the development process. A great deal of .attention should be directed towards the maximum utilization of dynamic multimedia technologies in order to transmit a comprehensive coverage of the real museum visit.
The Arab Region Virtual Museum (ARVM) informational content is foreseen to be structured around three main dimensions, regional, national and institutional dimension to provide a set of services described hereinafter:
lmplementation Challenges
The implementation of such a huge project in a technically new and evolving environment is a matter of great difficulties. Many challenges shall be faced during the implementation phase including economic, organizational, institutional and technical challenges that need to be resolved before hand. Following is a listing of these challenges:
Expected Benefits
Questions:
Our Experience
The Regional Information Technology and Software Engineering Center (RITSEC) has been playing a catalytic role in deploying information technology for cultural heritage preservation and information dissemination, both on national, regional and international basis. In this area RITSEC has implemented comprehensive documentation projects in museums, archaeological sites and manuscripts. These projects covered the creation of a comprehensive database for the collection including an ID image for each object, the formulation of terminology thesaurus, the development of an integrated registration and retrieval system, the development of multimedia cultural products like CD ROM, kiosks and web sites.
RITSEC has taken the lead in the region with regard to the promotion of the information highway as an effective means for information dissemination. On the national level, RITSEC has adopted the initiative of establishing the cultural information highway of Egypt (http://www.idsc.gov.eg/culture). In its initial phase it included sample collection of three museums from Egypt in addition to a directory of Egyptian museums, introductory information about Egyptian historical periods, archaeological sites of Egypt among others.
The site has been a true success story judging from the overwhelming hits (250,000) in three months. The response and feed back received was even more than satisfactory, the site was even a nucleus for the creation of a discussion group where by interested persons from around the world started providing comments and suggestions for future enhancements and additions to the site.
On the regional side, RITSEC has also taken the initiative, in cooperation with the ICOM ARAB organization to establish the nucleus of the ARVM represented by the creation of a web site for the organization (http://www.ritsec.net/icom-arb) to act as a forum for discussion and exchange among Arab professionals. The site also includes a comprehensive directory of Arab museums, to provide the Internet community with an overview of the richness of the Arabic cultural heritage.
Conclusion
In the new world of cyberspace, organizations need to adapt and utilize state-of-the-art technologies to maximize their own benefits. In the coming decade, the Information Highway shall be the main medium for information dissemination, promotion and linkage. The Arab region must position itself as a main player in this arena, otherwise it risks anonymity. It is an absolute necessity for the region to start building the ARVM as a regional collaborative project, in order to realize the benefits of the Information Highway to the region. ARVM will not only, truly revolutionize society, culture and daily life, it shall also enhance and promote community development.
ARVM is considered as an important initiative to link the Arab world to the future. The creation of ARVM will definitely encourage and increase accessibility to our cultural heritage, which in turn shall provide an educated image of our heritage and societies. ARVM mainly addresses an ever increasing group of users, currently estimated to be around 60 million. ARVM addresses these groups who may not have the chance to know about the region, except for information obtained from the news, which normally rotate around conflicts, wars and problems. ARVM shall in turn promote the region as a cultural tourist destination which is expected to support regional cultural, social, and economic development.
Beside disseminating information about the region's cultural heritage and the establishment of a mechanism for knowledge and experience exchange among professionals in the region. The project positions the region in the bandwagon of the Information Highway utilization and employment. Additionally, the implementation of ARVM shall create new jobs in high skill areas in Information Technology, communications, media, marketing, and research.
In the area of culture normally the benefits are in the acquired knowledge, experience and exposure rather than monetary returns. This does not eliminate the social and economic role played by cultural institutes within a community. We need not ignore the socio-economic impact of museums in particular, especially in developing countries. Income generation, creation of job opportunities and economic impact shall be assessed in order to support the economic development efforts in the region.
The technology, or current infrastructure in the region, may not allow us at the moment to fully implement the full scope of the project, we are certain that in a few years time, current congestions shall be resolved and the possibility of expansion shall materialize. It is essential though, to start immediately, and follow a get going strategy that aims at the utilization of available resources and complementing each other country's capabilities to create a comprehensive resource pool for project implementation.
References