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COVID-19 has undeniably affected museums' online content, yet attempts to identify or understand sector trends have been hampered by a lack of data. This paper uses a representative sample of 315 U.K. museums to create a much-needed benchmark against which museum practitioners can evaluate and contextualise prior studies and their own experiences. Gathering data from museum websites and five social media platforms, this paper is one of the largest studies of its kind in the European museum sector and the first of such scale in the U.K. Beginning with an overview of social media adoption, the paper then investigates museums' use of YouTube to identify sector trends. Crucially, this paper demonstrates a scalable methodology that enables a broader analysis of European and North American museums using TripAdvisor. This method has applications beyond the heritage sector and is pertinent to the study of any public facing attraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when it is particularly urgent to identify models of intersection across the digital and cultural sector to respond to an emergent funding and policy environment, this article contributes to a body of scholarly work around designing digital interventions for museums by identifying the role of cultural content in shaping design spaces for collaboration. The context of the article is a research project that brought together magical realist literature and the development of an Augmented Reality smartphone application realised through a public programme held at a museum of children's literature. This process created an open-ended design space within the organisation embedded into the development of public engagement workshops around magical realism and place making. It investigates how the cultural content (from archival material) occupied a key role in shaping technological development and suggests strategies that could grant autonomy and sustainability to cultural organisations in engaging in digital transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multimedia guides are an increasingly common feature within museums and galleries where they provide enhanced levels of interpretation and engagement. Their potential is well recognised in the literature and ongoing technological advances will ensure that their capabilities continue to expand. A key issue for many museums and galleries is to understand the practical realities of developing and operating a multimedia guide to truly realise its potential. In this article, we discuss our experiences developing the mi-Guide multimedia visitor guide at the Museum of Science and Industry (Manchester, UK) and share our experiences of the technical, digital design, content authorship and non-technical, people-related issues that need to be understood and addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the role of online resources hosted by museums as a means to communicate, engender research and reach out to new audiences. A number of scholars have already analysed the online presence of institutions and created an innovative new field of study by critiquing and theorising the emergence of 'digital heritage'. Building upon these developments, this article examines museum websites from a new perspective, through the markup and programme languages used to deliver the online content to the user. Drawing upon the nascent field of 'critical code studies', this article analyses the online exhibition 'Ancient Cyprus in the British Museum', to illustrate the value of this approach. This analysis highlights the manner in which the 'virtual' visitor experience is structured in a fashion comparable to the 'real' visitor experience. Using theories of 'intertextuality', this article examines the analogous relationship between the markup and programme languages and wider museum practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effectiveness of searching services on Greek museum websites. The study explores whether the provided searching facilities are sufficient and effective through the execution of sample queries. The study estimates the number of web pages and media files in these sites in order to understand what searching techniques are needed for improving the services offered to online visitors. It also records the opinions of users in terms of their desired searching facilities and their experiences in searching museum websites. The study's primary conclusion is that although information searching tools are considered essential by users, in most cases they are either nonexistent or ineffective on Greek museum websites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how museum professionals perceive the role played by Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in their institutions. We conceptualise the interaction between museum professionals, works of art, the public and ICT in terms of a mediation process, which we define and discuss from an Actor-Network Theory (ANT) perspective. Using a qualitative research approach, we examine the different components of this process within four major museums in France. Our results indicate that two kinds of ICT-supported mediation types emerge: visitor-oriented (entertaining and customised) and curator-oriented (scientific and content-driven), and that the pre-supposed positive impact of ICT on the professional practices of museums seems controversial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the Internet has become a place for participation, collaboration, and social exchange thanks to Web 2.0 tools. Museum websites are starting to incorporate these tools to involve audiences in ways that reach beyond the physical museum visit. This paper presents research exploring the extent to which museums in five countries (Italy, France, Spain, England, and the USA) have adopted Web 2.0 tools on their websites. Two hundred and forty museum websites belonging to four categories (arts, natural sciences, social sciences, and specialized) were analyzed, with results showing a low overall presence of Web 2.0 tools on museum websites, as well as significant differences in the use of Web 2.0 tools among countries and categories. The paper concludes with a discussion of the diversity of approaches in the use of Web 2.0 tools on museum websites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the collections libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) manage remain necessarily fragmented in the real world, potential users of these collections increasingly expect to experience the world of information as accessible from a single search online. The groundwork for success in a networked environment is laid in local collaborations, such as creating cohesiveness among LAMs belonging to the same organization. This article introduces the LAM workshops held by RLG Programs at the University of Edinburgh, Princeton University, the Smithsonian Institution, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Yale University, and presents the lessons abstracted from these day-long events. It suggests strategies to spur local as well as global collaborative activities in the areas of search and terminologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advocates that tribal museums adopt a critical and reflexive approach towards using new media technologies to provide digital access to their collections, in support of their agendas of cultural revitalization and self-representation. We present a model which is intended to reveal the important social and cultural factors which should influence the design and implementation of technological systems of access to tribal museum collections, and we show how our model is working in the context of a particular tribal museum - the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center of Zuni, New Mexico, USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to stimulate discussion about the nature of technology-related organisational change and how it is managed within museums. It argues that how we think about and understand change affects our ability to anticipate, shape and direct it. Drawing upon perspectives from sociology, information systems, management and organisation theory, this paper explores how we might understand and better manage change within the museums sector generally and, in particular, that which arises in our use of digital information and communication technologies (ICTs). It advocates the conscious use of theory, particularly organisational theory, to encourage new perspectives on organisations and the challenge of change represented by technology. Organisational theory particularly that informed by the 'new science' of complexity provides a rich source of insights about the nature of change which have so far been lacking in the discussion of digital cultural heritage within museums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the current state of museum guide technologies and applications in order to develop an analytical foundation for future research on an adaptive museum guide for families. The analysis focuses on three critical areas of interest in considering group and social interaction in museums: tangibility - the role of tangible user interfaces; interaction - visit types and visit flows; and adaptivity-user modeling approaches. It concludes with a discussion of four interrelated trajectories for interactive museum guide research including embodied interaction, gameplay, transparent and opaque interaction and the role of personal digital assistants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Museums are responding to the challenges of adapting to an ever-changing environment in their quest to remain relevant to their visitors, communities and stakeholders. New and emerging technology opportunities can support practices to adapt to this new environment. This paper presents a framework for transformation and a range of innovation scenarios offered by enabling technologies. The paper identifies opportunities based on technologies that are expected to be used widely within the next decade. It explores obstacles lying in the way of greater access to global cultural heritage and how these can be overcome. This paper is designed to be useful to decision-makers at memory institutions responsible for planning their direction in a rapidly changing technological environment and to serve as a basis for discussion of business transformations with their staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Museum collections are increasingly connected to global flows of information via the Internet. These occurrences are radically transforming the interfaces between collections, museums and communities, requiring a rethinking of how collections are conceived as markers of culture, the processes of acquisition and documentation, and the resultant meanings and significances attributed to them. Such transformations invite a more sustained analysis of how organisational structures based on hierarchical forms might operate in flexible networks and information flows. This paper discusses conceptual work undertaken for the Australian Research Council project Reconceptualising Heritage Collections. I will begin by discussing the logic that is currently shaping museums collections and information within global flows. Second, I rethink the metaphors that underpin museum collections interfaces. Third, I clarify and develop new perspectives on the relations and organisation surrounding museum collections and how complexity might be brought back into the documentation process. I then offer some possible solutions on how museums and collections might operate as a complex system in order to thrive and succeed in these flows and spaces. This discussion draws on complexity and network theory to consider all these things. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the recent growth of virtual museums, we lack detailed research on the intersection of museums and new media. This study presents the results of a survey of websites of New Zealand museums and heritage organisations using an idealised model of the basic functionality required in a well-defined professional sector. When this empirical model was compared with actual websites, it was found that many functions were not fully implemented. Interviews were then undertaken with museum staff which provided insights into the social factors affecting the planning, implementation and maintenance of museum websites, which were evidently developed in a haphazard fashion. Although museum websites do reflect fundamental museum functions, the results paint a bleak picture of an uneven and fragmented field, a digital divide which disadvantages small to medium museums. The paper recommends more guidelines rather than more technology, and calls for further research into the 'culture of new media'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the emergence of a subject now called digital heritage, and considers where it has come from and in what form it might progress. The paper contrasts the rise of theory within the subject of museum studies with the more practical preoccupations of its sub-discipline, museum computing. It highlights the emergence of more sociological and theorised readings of museum computing (what is termed here the cultural turn within the subject''s approach), alongside the co-ordinated expansion of research activity in this area, particularly through inter-governmental sponsorship. The early showings of a critical framework for this new active discipline are then explored, and a series of trajectories for enquiry and approach are suggested and stressed, including an engagement with ‘change’, an acknowledgement of the agency of new media, a recognition of the value of historical methodologies, and the aspiration for a more nuanced discourse. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]