Search Disabled |
|
|
|
Search Options | Help | Site Map | Cultivate Web Site | ||||
|
|
|||||
| Home | Current Issue | Index of Back Issues |
| Issue 1 Home | Editorial | Features | Regular Columns | News & Events | Misc. | ||
By Mario Bucolo - July 2000
Museumland.com is a world wide portal to online museums and cultural heritage organisations. It is one of the largest database in the world with more then 5921 links from 113 nations [1].
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Museumland.com is a point of reference for users all over the world to search any web site, news or information area related to cultural heritage, museums and galleries. Museumland.com was created to fill the gap between museums and Internet users. Using Museumland.com it is possible to access thousand of on-line Museums and Cultural Heritage institutions. The site is updated daily with new links from an increasing number of nations in the world.
On Museumland.com users can find any type of online museum from history museums to art museums, from automobile museums to war museums and so on. Some of the current categories of online Museums include archaeological, artistic, ethnological, scientific, technological, religious, historical, musical, natural, children museums, war, photographic and virtual museums. Museumland.com also reviews any related institution/organisation such as libraries, monuments, gardens, churches, abbeys, castles, zoos, parks, planetariums, collections of regalia, famous people's houses etc.
Museumland.com aims to enable access to a better quantity and quality of information. There are thousands of museums in the world and on Museumland.com you will all be able to access all of them that are on-line.
 |
| Figure 1: The bronze statues of Riace |
The two famous bronze statues of Riace, licensed by the Italian Cultural Heritage Ministry, are now the official testimonials of Museumland.com.
The Museumland idea was initiated in September 1999. It is now managed by Mario Bucolo and co-promoted within the context of the European Commission DGXIII initiative MEDICI framework [2], though no financial support is given. The technical department is co-ordinated in Italy by ABIS Multimedia and the marketing and editorial staff are based in London at Multimedialand Ltd [3].
The key point of Museumland.com is the opportunity to have a unique reference point for museum and cultural heritage organisations. If anyone tries to search for the word museum in "Altavista" they will find more than 3 million related web sites. A search on "Yahoo" will give different results but a similar number of hits. Such a search would not consider all the possible translations of the word Museum either; for example museum is museo in Italian. The advantage of using Museumland.com as a unique gateway to the museums, galleries and cultural heritage contents, information and news is self evident.
An area of Museumland.com's work is in helping traditional museums with the process of moving online. It operates as an Incubator for any museums or cultural heritage institution enabling them to join the web. Museumland.com will host micro web sites for the museums or cultural heritage institution that are currently not online in order to allow them visibility on the Internet. This opportunity is free of charge.
Museumland.com gives benefits for both users and Museums:
Museumland.com is now on the way to setting up an international partnership. They have settled agreements for mirror sites in Japan, France, UK, Portugal, Eire, and Argentina. Museumland.com will also be soon available in 7 languages. The ambition of Museumland.com is to be the top world-wide reference portal for the museum and cultural heritage sector.
 |
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Mario Bucolo
ABIS Multimedia
bucolo@multimedialand.com
Phone: +39-095-387092
Mario Bucolo has 17 years experience in the computer graphics field and 14 years experience working on multimedia applications. He is the manager and owner of ABIS Multicom, based in Catania, Italy and Multimedialand Ltd, based in London. He teaches Ethnomedia and is the author of many articles and presentations given in international congress. Mario is the project leader of a number of multimedia applications for many different information points in the museums, cultural heritage, tourism and retail sectors. His specialised area is human-computer interface design.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For citation purposes:
Bucolo, M. "Museumland.com - The World Wide Portal to Museums and Cultural Heritage",
Cultivate Interactive, issue 1, 3 July 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue1/museumland/>
|
|