LLP-LDV/TOI/07/IT/016

GENERAL PRESENTATION: THE VISION OF F-MU.S.EU.M. Marco Merlini F-M U.S.EU.M. (Form Multimedia System for a European Museum) LLP-LDV/TOI/07/IT/016 First Transnational Workshop Sibiu, 9-10 January 2008

F-MU.S.EU.M. is a project to be realized under the Leonardo da Vinci Programme, focused on the updating, systematization and transfer of outcomes and outputs achieved and realized during the previous project MU.S.EU.M., consisting of an online learning model with innovative contents, results, products and methodologies built by 7 National museums of history and archaeology. The MU.S.EU.M. learning model is based on the “Virtual museum of the European roots” which focuses on prehistoric artefacts with high communicational value. MU.S.EU.M. helped public museums migrate into virtual museums by supporting the training of professional staff in relevant competences using a transnational training network. The project

F-MU.S.EU.M. CHALLENGE The transfer action (Virtual museum + online learning model) will be realized on institutions of regional dimension. The working hypothesis is that regional museums have the same specific needs and the same potentialities of the national museums of the European capitals involved in MU.S.EU.M. project. While the MU.S.EU.M. project was focused only on prehistoric museums and collections, the F-MU.S.EU.M. project will be focused also on other typologies of finds belonging to history, archaeology, art, ethnology, science. A third challenge is to realize a Virtual museum for a wider audience and as factor of attraction for cultural tourism.

F-MU.S.EU.M. is co-ordinated by EURO INNOVANET, which also co-ordinated MU.S.EU.M. project. Museum partners ● Regional History Museum”, Kyustendil, Bulgaria; ● Musei Civici di Pitigliano, Italy; ● Banat Museum, Timisoara, Romania Technical support partners: ● Cultura Animi Foundation, Sofia, Bulgaria; ● Trust Rome, Italy; ● University Lucian Blaga Sibiu- IPCTE, Sibiu, Romania; ● City of Rome - Dept. XIV for Local Development, Training and Employment Policies, Rome, Italy The partnership

Museum beneficiary partners ● Regional History Museum of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria; ● Regional History Museum of Rousse, Bulgaria; ● Museo F. Rittatore Vonwiller of Farnese, Italy; ● Museo di Preistoria e Protostoria Valle del Fiora of Manciano, Italy; ● Muzeul de Istorie of Deva, Romania ● National Muzeul Brukenthal of Sibiu, Romania + Municipalities - Counties – Local agencies for Development

Museums and technology change: the background ICT (Information and Communication Technology) has many applications within the walls of museums. Since the seventies, computer based methods have been applied to cultural heritage for developing inventories and cataloguing preserved exhibitions. Digital techniques have been the main tool for analysing and studying objects. However, ICT methods applied to the cultural heritage had only researchers and academic scholars as main users, were usually working off-line and were based on an centralised electronic access.

The framework: Internet revolution on museum sector Nowadays museums find out in Internet and in the progress of digital imagery a useful instrument to develop new modalities for supplying their cultural heritage also to a mass audience. At present time we find in Internet: oWeb sites of cultural institutions closely referred to a physical museum, oOnline digital exhibitions which are autonomous from the actual museum or not have reference in it, oVirtual reconstructions of some specific issues, oCommunities of museums, oInventories and catalogues of objects, o Downloadable software referred to the cultural heritage. o and Virtual museums

Two key factors to virtual museum success Museums’ web sites are over time becoming more sophisticated, and physical museums are ceasing to be the unique repository for gathering and exhibiting cultural goods. The virtual museum is a strong approach for providing culture heritage. There are two main factors for the success of virtual museum approach: I. The first is an increasing value added respect to their actualcounterparts by a strong attitude towards augmented culture. II. Computer graphics enchantments and virtual reality (VR) are a second factor supporting the success of virtual museums.

F-M.U.S.EU.M. driveway to Virtual museum/1 For the F-M.U.S.EU.M. project, a virtual museum is not a digital replica of the original tangible one, but is a new product with its distinct identity based on the digital environment. It is: o Web oriented = It is provided online and it is conceived to be provided online o Digital environment oriented = It is developed in a computer environment and the contents are anything which can be digitized (not only texts, but paintings, drawings, photographs, diagrams, graphs, recordings, video clips, newspaper or magazine articles, transcripts of interviews, numerical databases, i.e. any item which may be saved on the virtual museum's file server). It may also offer pointers to information resources around the world relevant to the museum's main focus.

F-M.U.S.EU.M. driveway to Virtual museum/2 o Information oriented = as an organized collection of electronic artefacts and information resources indexed within a computer based environment, the purpose of F-M.U.S.EU.M. virtual museum is transferred from preservation of physical goods to the diffusion and promotion of the information embedded in them. o For the above reason, the graphic interface is working in a hypertext structure with the main purpose of preserving the information supplied by the contents included. o Virtual reality based = It is established upon some virtual reality applications. o Highly accessible and friendly.

F-M.U.S.EU.M. driveway to Virtual museum/3 o Based on indexes and metadata base = indexes and surfing itineraries are the key factors for defining a bundle of hyperlinked imagines and texts as a virtual museum based on a database o With deep cognitive impact = It is able to render dynamically intelligible the artefacts in accordance to the network of relations between them and their original context and to establish logical and chronological links between objects, whereas in an actual museum the preservation purposes of the collections creates a distance between them and the users; a distance that can be assessed as a barrier to cognitive interactions o Transforms users/visitors into interpreters = it assesses users as interpreters of the goods/services supplied through interactivity, virtual reconstruction and hypertexted organisation of the contents. The critical process is the modality to provision the knowledge flow during the surfing sessions.

F-M.U.S.EU.M. driveway to Virtual museum/4 o Tailored for a wide public, not only for experts o Delivering new services e.g. merchandising o Able to develop networking capacity = key features are transactions and interactions among the museum partners of F- MU.S.EU.M., with other cultural entities and with users/visitors.

F-M.U.S.EU.M. website is available through:

An open question: the virtual degree of our virtual museum We have to create a virtual museum which, on the one hand, is not out of the means we can relay upon but, on the other hand, it is not simple and add-on to what has already been realized in the websites of the respective partners. In whole web sites of the museum partnership the virtuality is substantially absent. With this information in mind, we have to carefully find the balancing point between the technological offer of the technical partners and the feasible demand by museum partners.

Proposals for our Virtual Museum/1 I.while the MU.S.EU.M. project was focused only on prehistoric museums and collections, the F- MU.S.EU.M. project will be focused also on other typologies of collections, such as collections of history, archaeology, art, ethnology, science II.Selecting artefacts able to bridge between museum partners (full members and beneficiaries) and able to talk about the European roots III. showing the selected artefacts: -on line -in 3D -rotating -and with the possibility to zoom on topics details.

Proposals for our Virtual Museum/2 IV. Playing with multimedia possibilities, enriching the information about the 3D represented object not only by a static and synthetic description, but by the available paintings, drawings, photographs, recordings, video segments, newspaper or magazine articles, transcripts of interviews, numerical databases and links to information resources around the world. V. Delivering the Virtual Museum in the following languages: English, Bulgarian, Italian and Romanian VI. Allowing the user to surf inside a single museum framework or inside thematic routes (typology of objects), chronology, geography.

Proposals for our Virtual Museum/3 VII. Narrate appealing stories VIII. Create tourist-cultural itineraries IX. Updating educational products for the training of 3 professional profiles (managers, techniques, contents and) + realization of a fourth e-course devoted to communication experts. X. Museums are protagonists and not commitments XI. F-MU.S.EU.M. will help museums partners and beneficiaries migrate into virtual museums by supporting the training of professional staff in relevant competences using a transnational training network: restricted area, laboratories (photo + Web),e-learning methodologies.

WORKPLAN PHASE1 Executive plan, programming of activities, organizational structure and institution of management committee, first partnership workshop in Sibiu, mailing list 15 November December 2007 PHASE 2 Realization of a web portal for the project, research activity 15 December March 2008

PHASE 3 Preliminary tasks to the experimentation and the transfer activities (Beta version of Web site -Brochure on the project) 15 March August 2008 PHASE 4 Experimentation and transfer of beta version of training model to the museum partners (Virtual museum phase A; Laboratories at museum partners for photo + contents; Mid-term meeting at Sofia) 15 August January 2009 PHASE 5 Final adaptment of the F-MU.S.EU.M. model (Laboratories at museum partners for database + web; courseware on the “museum communicator”) 15 January April 2009

PHASE 6 Transfer of F-MU.S.EU.M. Training and communicative model to 6 museums beneficiaries 15 April September 2009 PHASE 7 Validation, modellization, and evaluation of F-MU.S.EU.M. Training and communicative model. Final workshop in Rome 15 September 2009 – 14 November 2009 PHASE 8 Valorization(dissemination + experimentation) of F-MU.S.EU.M. Training and communicative model 15 November 2009 – 14 November 2009