UK Museums and the Web
Trade Stands and Posters

Date: Thursday Nov 15, 2001 Place: The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Chris Meaney
Harvard Computer Services

HCS

Harvard is one of the sector's leading specialist consultancies, with decades of combined experience in the museum and private sectors. Our experience on the Internet goes back to 1995 and we recently were the developers of Pevsner's Architectural Guides' website - Looking at Buildings. www.lookingatbuildings.org.uk We have also recently launched an innovative web-authoring tool, allowing cost-effective web development for the culture sector with minimal technical experience required. HCS also offers the following core services:

  • Business consultancy
  • Problem solving
  • Internet/intranet consultancy
  • E-commerce consultancy
  • Strategy creation/business planning
  • Web-site "due diligence"
  • Business analysis and research
  • Multimedia development


Ben Sullivan
KE Software (UK) Ltd

KE EMu

KE EMu provides superior collections management facilities for museums, art galleries, herbaria and botanic gardens. KE EMu is a feature rich museum management system designed to provide comprehensive managment and access to very large and diverse collections. Unlike other museum software, KE EMu integrates an extensible multi-discipline catalogue with interpretative information, multimedia resources and an easy to configure web interface.

www.kesoftware.com


 

Frank Colson , Caryn Edwards, John Hare
MWresearch

Dissolution of the Monasteries

Dr. John Hare, one of MWR's Education Consultants, will demonstrate 'The Dissolution of the Monasteries', an MWR education package currently published by Granada Media's AngliaCampus site. MWR staff and consultants will discuss the exploitation of quality content, sound pedagogy and innovative software in the context of museums and learning.


Owen Tribe
Digital Architecture Group

The Digital Architecture Group offers expertise in content management, XML, web design and CD/DVD-ROM development. Its XML-based content management service, RegenerationTM, helps you breathe life into your content. RegenerationTM is powerful, flexible and cost-effective. Digital Architecture takes care of software, hardware, support and security, while the service's powerful content management tools, XML document repository and authoring services framework are supplied online for a monthly fee. The focus is on helping clients make the most of their valuable digital content.

 


Alex Morrison
Cognitive Applications Ltd

Collections Online - results and ideas

Cog App has worked with many museums putting collections online and will discuss different approaches for different types of collection and organization.

 


Joey Julien
okupi ltd

Virtual Museums on the Web

As a content creation company, okupi have had deep experience with realising how museums and art galleries can extend their reach onto the internet through a whole range of platforms and delviery channels. For example our interactive 3D interface for the Science Museum's Wellcome Wing http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/wellcome-wing/ww_frame.asp?site=3d illustrates how a physical space can be augmented using a virtual component that can present an archive of information outside the contraints of bricks & mortar.

 


Paula Briggs
The Arts Education Exchange

AccessArt - Visual arts education online

AccessArt is an evolving collection of interactive online resources which are based upon visual arts teaching in museums, galleries and schools. www.accessart.org.uk


Chris Levack
comm@NET: the community archive network

comm@NET:the community archive network

comm@NET is a registered charity that promotes, supports and develops community archives. These are collections of photographs, text stories, oral reminicences, documents and video clips that have been digitised using specially developed Comma software. They are fully searchable databases that serve as a record of a community's cultural heritage and are published as a local CD Rom and on the Internet. The two distinctive characteristics of community archives are:

  • the community creates their own archive
  • the community owns the copyright to it

Charlotte Stone
Science Museum

Exhiblets- information resources

Known as Exhiblets, The Science Museum has developed a collection of web resources that combine bibliographies, references and collections information to produce a discreet information package. Each Exhiblet uses a specific object, collection, or personality to explain events, discoveries and personalities in Science and Technology. The resource was borne out of a need to take a pro-active approach to answering common enquires. One of the aims of the Exhiblet was to develop a content and technical template that allowed an affordable web product to be developed by staff who did not necessarily have specific WWW skills. Another was to strengthen the collections' presence on the web and extend curatorial involvement within it. We also wanted a stimulus for creating new and more accurate data that could be fed back into our collections management system. In many cases we wanted to use existing data from other areas of the museum as the basis of the Exhiblet so that this could also be re-entered into the system. Each of these aims was met and a template was developed which had the agreed core elements but could be extendable according to the subject matter. The Science Museum has now over 15 Exhiblets on its website. Each one has been completed by a researcher, an Intern or a curator. Evaluation of the site has been carried out both in the galleries and in focus groups. The design that appears on the web, is a direct result of these discussions. The new Exhiblet to be demonstrated is one that features our latest and largest recent acquisition- a Woods Newspaper Press. This was the last Fleet Street printing press, before the newspaper industry relocated.

 


Emma Willson
Becta

Museums and the National Grid for Learning

The National Grid for Learning at www.ngfl.gov.uk is a DfES funded portal that supports all educators and learners. Museums are encouraged to submit their websites for registration with the portal.


Mike Gogan
The Virtual Experience Company Ltd

Virtual Reality on the Web

Our company works with a number of organisations and museums in providing disabled access tools, interpretation and web content. Our speciality is 3D visualisation and real-time Virtual Reality. We will show some examples of the latest technology and give a short presentations on the application of VR to the web.