Utilisatrice:Museum Quality Prints

Definition of Virtual Museum (Fa Ndiaye.2013)
In the physical museum world, a museum is something more complex and multifaceted than an exhibition. An exhibition is one part of the museum as a whole, usually one exhibition of many that make up the museum. A museum is an institution concerned with collecting, preserving and displaying cultural heritage. It is also defined as a meeting place and an institution of education.

Through literature studies, the definition of the virtual museum is set as a source of information, generally on the Internet, and accessible to all. A virtual museum presents information through multimedia, and with the help of an interface that is based on a concept of rooms that the visitor navigate to experience the virtual museum. Information is as essential to the virtual museum as objects are for a physical museum.(ElinIvarsson, 2009)

Therefore, « virtual museum » has become a useful synonym for multimedia products and websites capable of providing new and fresh experiences of a specific museum and its heritage, or creating a large system of interconnections among different museums.

The use of the term « virtual »is commonly associated with the idea of an extension of reality. Similarly, the expression "virtual museum" is usually adopted to mean a process of duplication of a physical museum and its objects that is enabled by information technologies (Elisa Giaccardi, 2004).

Where as many exhibitions are meeting places and educative, they are part of the display principle of the museum definition. When museums create virtual displays of their cultural heritage it is generally in the shape of a virtual exhibition.

The Most Important Sides Of Virtual Museums
« The virtual museums is a source of authentic information, in a cyberspace filled with uncontrolled knowledge ». (Anderson, Maxwell, L., 1997)

In a world of information and learning, museums have been the main institution handling the objects, the real things of history. Virtual museums are not just informative websites. Instead, they are looked upon as institutions that stand for instruction, authenticity and preservation.

With physical museums this role have largely been connected to the objects of the museum collections. This need for the museum as a site of cultural heritage arises not just in reason of the emergence of new methods and forms of artistic creation, but also in relation to preservation and renewal of the existing cultural institutions.

Museums and cultural objects represent a complex and multifaceted reality in which “physical”, “cultural” and “virtual” interact and may acquire different functions and different degrees of importance. According to Benedetti, museums and cultural objects are “iridescent”. The idea of “iridescence”, in contemporary museology, refers to the fact that the perception of cultural objects (how we “see” them) is subject to change according to the different perspectives in which they can be interpreted and presented. (Benedetti 2002) Normally, this perception is the result of the cultural and historical interplay among the physical tangibility of the object (physical), its actual interpretation (cultural), and its potential interpretations and meanings (virtual).

One of the most important sides of the virtual museum is, however, the accessibility. It is not a part of a location, but available to everyone, everywhere. Not only is this an important quality for reaching audiences, but it also put a democratic aspect to the virtual museum. Objects, collections, buildings, etc. become recognized as heritage when they express the value of society and so the tangible can only be understood and interpreted through the intangible” (Munjeri 2004)