Virtual museum a door to ASEAN collections

Virtual museum a door to ASEAN collections

By Amir Sidharta

JAKARTA (JP): Those familiar with "the corridor" in Michael
Crichton's Disclosure will be able to imagine the ultimate
experience of accessing museum exhibits through a computer. Some
time in the future, as virtual reality technology progresses, it
will be possible to walk through a museum and see simulated
exhibits from a virtual reality station in your own room.

Director of the Asian Cultural History Program at the
Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, Dr.
Paul Taylor, delivered his Virtual Museum of ASEAN at the Museum
of Conception of the Proclamation of Independence in Central
Jakarta, on Tuesday, March 28. Taylor was accompanied by physical
anthropologist and statistician of the Museum of Natural
History's Department of Anthropology Dr. Bruno Frolich. He is
Taylor's colleague and has been instrumental in organizing the
project.

A virtual museum would consist of images, essays, narrations
and data found in museums which could be accessed on CD-ROM and
other information-storage devices. It would allow scholars and
novices to browse through thousands of images and associated
information from collections in Southeast Asia, or anywhere else,
including photographs, films, interactive maps, time lines,
essays and glossaries from a PC.

The collection would be compiled by scanning photographic
images of the museum objects and entering related data into a
database system which would be able to handle both text and
images. A sophisticated high-resolution scanner is currently
being developed at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in the
American state of New York. The scanner is able to scan anything
from a small 35mm slide to three-dimensional large objects.

Not new

The idea of a virtual museum is by no means new. While
reverting to America Online through my modem via Macintosh
computer during cold winter days in Washington D.C., I came
across their virtual version of the Smithsonian museums. Through
the interface that was available at the time, one could wander
into certain departments and obtain information about the
exhibits at the Smithsonian.

In one of the classes I attended while receiving my museum
training at the George Washington University, William Lynch from
the university's Education Computer Lab presented The Virtual
Historic House interactive computer program that would allow
elderly visitors and visitors with disabilities complete access
to museums -- particularly small museums -- that were not yet
able to provide adequate facilities to accommodate them.

He had created a virtual model of the museum and placed images
of artifacts within the computer generated space. People could
view and wander through each room and encounter the objects via a
computer monitor.

Not all museums are financially able to comply with the
requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act to provide
every visitor equal access to exhibits. Many historical house
museums can't afford or justify providing costly facilities, like
elevators, for the small number of disabled visitors because they
desperately need funds just to keep their museums running.

Such a computer program -- although a poor substitute --
offers the best alternative to the real museum experience.

Many museums in the United States have started to offer
Internet users access to their collections. Reproductions of the
rare historical documents of the Library of Congress can be
viewed on the Internet. In addition, the library has also made
available sets of images and related information from actual
exhibits held at the library, including reproductions from the
Vatican Library and sections of the 2,000 year old Dead Sea
Scrolls. The Smithsonian has several online locations, like the
institution itself, which also consists of several museums
scattered around several different locations. The National
Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. offers Internet users to
search through a database of basic information about its vast
collection of 1,600 works of art.

Other smaller museums, like the University of California at
Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology, Jane Adam's Hull House Museum
in Chicago, the California Museum of Photography, The Bishop
Museum in Honolulu, have also started to provide online services
through the Internet.

Tremendous

Computers offer tremendous possibilities for the museum world.
Objects can be photographed or video recorded and then converted
into still or moving digital images. Digital recordings of museum
collections have been done at certain museums as part of their
cataloging efforts. Advances in computer aided design and
modeling enable objects and spaces to be recreated.

Interactive interfaces such as those offered by online
services, allow progressive selection on the part of the user to
the available options. For example, a virtual museum could offer
a choice of sections into which visitors could enter. At a touch
of a button one would enter the Natural History department of the
museum. Then the user could select the Insect Room out of the
list of available exhibition rooms. Once in the Insect Room, one
could choose from a selection of cases including butterflies,
ants, bees and so forth. The user could consult the genealogical
chart of the order or retrieve information about individual
species.

The novelty of an interactive computer program will make it
more user friendly than daunting museums. Indonesian children
hate the word "don't", and Indonesian museums are filled with
"don'ts". "Don't touch", we are constantly reminded. In the
virtual museum touching is a major requirement. You actively
search for information by selecting items in the directories or
menus.

The virtual museum also eliminates all the problems
Indonesians expect when visiting a museum, such as having to
drive through chaotic traffic, having to buy the entrance ticket,
having to make sure that you keep the ticket just in case they
check, having to hand your belongings to the coat room clerk,
having to face up to security guards who tell you not to run, not
to eat and to be quiet.

At the virtual museum you can't run. You have to sit and
relax, with your hands fixed on the keyboard of your computer,
waiting to respond to the choices that appear on the next menu.
You might even be able to eat as long as no one tells on you. You
can scream all you like, if it gets that exciting.

The virtual museum is most likely to contain a selected
collection, so it wouldn't be as boring as going to Indonesian
museums which tend to be crammed with all sorts of objects. If
you don't like a room, you are immediately taken to another room
with the punch of a few buttons.

Entering the virtual museum is a fun. You won't get scared in
the virtual museum. No need to worry about the ghosts that
Indonesians claim haunt most of Jakarta's museums. No need to
worry about any mess apart from your own. The virtual museum is
always as clean as your computer.

Paul Taylor asked what museum projects IBM could help support
here, I proposed the idea of a virtual museum of Indonesia. It
could be compiled from a network of museum collections from the
entire archipelago linked through the Internet. Virtual museums,
by virtue of their novelty, would no doubt be attractive.
Indonesians would be geared to explore what the museum has to
offer.

Research potential

The possibilities of a virtual museum of Indonesia are mind-
boggling. Imagine yourself roaming through museums in Kalimantan
or Irian Jaya from your desk in Jakarta or even Washington.

It is hard for Indonesian museum staff to keep track of their
collections. A database including every object in the collection
available through the Internet or on CD-ROM would be beneficial
to Indonesian museums. The virtual museum offers an excellent
tool for collection management.

It also enables an open exchange of information among museums
and institutions. Instead of having to visit museums scattered
all around Indonesia, anyone could easily access any museum
collection. The system also makes it easier to conduct
comparative studies among similar objects scattered around the
world.

"The system would allow a small museum to obtain images and
information on an object which is in a museum in another province
or another country without having to physically move the object,"
said Taylor. From his office in Washington, he would be able to
study an object kept in a museum in Ambon.

Before the Virtual Museum of ASEAN project began, Paul Taylor
was already entering the Philippine collection at the Smithsonian
onto compact disks, as part of a project instigated by researcher
Patricia Afable from the National Museum of Natural History. The
Philippines was interested in making more use of the little-known
collection, and is working on producing a CD-ROM called The
Philippine Heritage Collection: a Smithsonian Resource Guide.

Taylor expanded the project to include museums in the ASEAN
region, but has limited the scope to the best collections as a
start. He started the project by managing the Smithsonian's
collection from the ASEAN region.

A portion of the William L. Abbott collection at the National
Museum of Natural History has been processed. Abbott was a doctor
from Philadelphia who explored Africa, the Middle East and
Southeast Asia between 1887 to 1909. At the end of the
expedition he was active in Nias, North Sumatra, Kalimantan, and
Irian Jaya, collecting ethnographic objects and taking
photographs for the Smithsonian. Half of the 1,800 photographs he
took have been scanned, stored in the project's computer system
and transferred onto CD-ROM.

Next on the list is the collection of Matthew Stirling.
Stirling led an important expedition along the Mamberamo River in
Irian Jaya in 1926. "Our studies of his collections would include
cooperating with museum in Irian Jaya in an effort to obtain new
documentation about the collection of tribes in Irian Jaya
visited by Stirling," Taylor explained.

The Virtual Museum of ASEAN would not end with the collections
of Abbott and Stirling. "We plan to enter all the materials in
collections from ASEAN countries at the Smithsonian Institution
and make them available via the Internet or compact disks. To
make this happen, of course, sound cooperation among our museums
and institutions is needed," Taylor said. Artifacts from a Thai
exhibit being prepared by Taylor's wife, Lisa McQuail, will soon
be entered into the system.

"If virtual museums are so much fun, won't they make real
museums obsolete?" a question was raised after the presentation.
In his answer, Taylor compared the museum to a novel. "When they
make movies out of books, the number of the readers of the book
increases rather than decreases," he explained.

Once available through the Internet, the Virtual Museum of
ASEAN would indeed be a great marketing device. It would
introduce Internet users to the number of museums that exist in
the region and also attract them to visit museums with
interesting collections.