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Magic Carpets and the Tools of Institutional Knowledge
Why the museum community is leading the field in networked multimedia

Bob Duffy
Strategic Communications
Columbia, MD USA



1. Prologue: the Web is a powerful digital media resource, but who's driving?

Particularly in the U.S. and Canada, the popular media buzz about the Worldwide Web (WWW) has become tediously familiar. Today, we're told, the Web touches the lives of many millions of individuals around the globe. Strangely, however, no one seems to be quite certain just how many Web "surfers" are out there. Still, we're assured that this population is growing explosively, or at least geometrically, or at any rate very fast.

While the mass media frequently do give us the lowdown on the Web as an information and digital publishing utility, it's inevitably yoked to that other ubiquitous media favorite: the personal "home page". Everyone, it's reported, can create one of these self-affirming footholds in cyberspace. Mount your cyber-soapbox and post images, sounds, snapshots, video clips, reflections, lists of favorite things -- even "linked" lists of other Web sites of especial appeal.

There's no doubt that the personal-page strain of Web publishing is indeed a phenomenon of great reach and influence. But it s not the whole story on Web-anchored digital publishing by any means, although it has much bearing in a curiously indirect way on this discussion of substantive digital media activity among museums on the Web. It deserves some exposition here.

Today most of the several thousand Web personal pages emanate from North America, where entrepreneurial Webspace providers have sprouted willy-nilly across the landscape. Many of these providers make free or very inexpensive space available to individuals, usually in the interest of attracting commercial Web-presence business to their servers.

The personal-page phenomenon has imparted something of a cottage-industry sheen to the Web -- particularly in its North American reaches. It has also introduced an insistent back beat of self- absorption, as the technically inclined among the so-called Generation X , and its many profit-minded camp followers, have flocked to this new global platform. And so we find lists of favorite rock groups, films, and TV programs, most often complete with hyperlinks to innumerable other personal and, yes, even flashy commercial pages enshrining the same or similar passions and interests.

Throughout this expanding galaxy of personal pages we also discover occasional pictures: digitized photos of boyfriends, girlfriends, cars, pets. In a nod to the rich multimedia capabilities of the Web, a score or two of these latter sites urge us to click our mouses on an image of their respective animal-pal to hear it bark, or squawk, or hiss, or in a puckish reversal of expectations call us a bawdy name. Exemplars of this last instance tend to enjoy somewhat limited runs on the Web, owing to the political prickliness of commercial Webspace providers, particularly in the States.

All this is wondrously fascinating, trendwise, if only occasionally interesting in specifics. Even so, where the most inventive of these individual home-page publishers are at their creative best, they are indeed quite good. And, predictably, the talented few attract imitators beyond numbering.

Still, it's a bit unnerving to observe how many of these apparent imitators do so in the official pages of corporations and other institutions on the Web. It would seem that some organizational Web-planners are committed to scooping up every prevailing cyber-surfer trapping they find on the Web: the hieroglyphic image maps, the swarms of figurative icons, the sparse text, and all that play on the adjective "cool" and the crypto-adverbial prefix "way-" as in the incomparably synergistic "way-cool".

They are convinced, it appears, that ripping off these prevalent stylistic markers gives them an automatic claim on the Web's vitality. And it may indeed be true that, for Web-based purveyors of certain goods and services, aping the prevailing Gen X dialect is a painless entrée into what's perceived as a fruitful market or audience sector.

So maybe it's not all that surprising that these tonalities crop up so often at institutional Web sites where one might expect a more, well, informative approach for instance, on the official home page of the U.S. White House. There, in just one among a wealth of other compelling interactive activities, Americans of the Web-surfer persuasion can hear the "First Feline", as presidential pet Socks is dubbed there, make an audio comment for the record. (1)

The White House is by no means unique in co-opting this cultural marker. Survey your own sample of the several thousand corporate and institutional home pages. Compared to some, Socks' sound-bite seems singularly well-formulated and rich with useful detail. For all the way-cool atmospherics, a surprising number of these institutional sites are largely devoid of substantive and useful information about their sponsoring organizations and their activities.(2) The institutions that are marching exclusively to the drumbeat of cyber-surfer style may or may not be engaging these immediate target segments, but in many cases they are neglecting the needs of other important audiences: the professional populations that are employing the Web with increasing frequency in their work. They should know better.

Professionals who depend on substantive information about companies and organizations -- securities analysts, market researchers, journalists, academics, librarians-- are not likely to find much of interest in these corporate Webspaces. It's as if many corporations and institutions are simply testing the Web, and that they have yet to discover the inherent versatility of a Web infrastructure for networked electronic publishing, a corporate mission that can push beyond erecting a colorful billboard in cyberspace.

The Worldwide Web originated as a collaborative tool for scientific researchers interested in sharing information that could be presented most effectively in both textual and visual modes. In some quarters the Web continues to perform this function with distinction, vigor, and a global reach. But these are specialist, largely academic audiences. The fact is, when it comes to more general populations, or even more specialized and demanding categories of business and institutional constituencies, Worldwide Web publishing is barely out of the starting blocks. Among many of its most visible exemplars, it makes only rudimentary use of its digital media potential, and rarely addresses communication objectives that require the presentation of substantive information in a discursive style. Most significantly, this lowest-common-denominator communication strategy makes scant use of Web infrastructures as repositories of institutional knowledge, arguably the most valuable resource available to a company or organization with an inclination to operate --or compete-- on a global stage.



2. Museums are the real innovators in digital media publishing à la Web

There s one center of activity on the Web where practitioners are displaying no such timidity about distributing substantive information, in a mixed-media key, via the Web. Museums around the world are taking to the Web with a presentational and educational energy that s remarkable. Merging the substantive and the visually compelling, of course, is their bread and butter in the real world, whether their intellectual domains involve fine arts, or anthropology, or science or technology.

In planning an institution's Web infrastructure, a museum's management naturally tends to focus on the inherent appeal of its physical collections, an approach that usually calls for a predominantly visual mode of presentation. But a parallel goal is always education. A museum's online images are rarely solely decorative: they usually benefit from being embedded in an informative and interpretive dimension. Some corporate Web planners would do well to note the distinctions implied here, because their organizations have likely accrued intellectual capital (3) that would benefit similarly from just such dual-stream exposition.

In a museum Web space, simply slapping up stand-alone full-color images of a Bruegel, or a Maori ceremonial mask, or a lunar orbiter, or a spotted salamander doesn't go far enough. Context and commentary are essential in a museum's mission. It's a given that Web-developers in the museum world frame their images, at a minimum, with substantive parallel text.

Although a few museums are exploring the use of audio and video materials (4) in addition to this dual text-image stream, the institutions that merely present complementary text and pictures (beyond logotypes and directional icons) are already surpassing prevailing standards among a significant segment of the corporate and institutional publishers on the Web today.



3. Museums on the Web: a travelogue

As of this writing (July 1995), there are more than fifty brick-and-mortar museums with a substantive, mixed-media presence (i.e., they are not just posting programs-and-hours data) on the WorldWide Web. There are many other interesting Web sites --widely known as "virtual museums" or "virtual collections"-- that appropriate to themselves a museum-like mission: to organize a coherent digital media presentation centering on a fine arts, cultural, or scientific topic or body-of-knowledge.

These virtual exhibits vary in size and scope, and are frequently the products of independent enthusiasts not formally affiliated with a real-world museum, although the creators often are academics with educational affiliations. Some of these virtual collections are among the most impressive digital media presentations on the Web today.

You will find a selective listing of both the virtual and real-world museums on the Web, along with their WWW addresses --or Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)-- in the Resource List appended to this discussion. It's important to note that the Web is growing and changing rapidly, and that this list will surely be incomplete by the time it is printed. For that reason, I'm including the names and URLs of several of the best online reference lists (in Web parlance, "hot-lists") covering the museum community. These are updated faithfully to keep pace with the shifting landscape of the Web. They provide another convenient feature as well. Because they are hyper-linked into the WorldWide Web, you can click on the name of a listed museum or other resource and go directly to its page on the Web.

Given the scope of this discussion and the number of museums and collections on the Web, I am limiting my role in this discussion to that of guide and occasional commentator on points of interest. The Resource List serves up the real substance in this presentation. Follow the URLs provided there and, in keeping with the spirit of the Web, explore these rewarding digital media resources for yourself. You will find a consistent clarity of organization and regard for the value of mixed-media content that's only occasionally evident among the far more numerous corporations that have established Web spaces.

Here's some context to get you started.

First: the fine arts collections. As you explore this subset of museums, you will quickly discover that many of the most renowned international institutions are nowhere to be found on the Web. There's no Web server at either the National Gallery of the U.S. or its British counterpart of the same name. Among the major European institutions, only the Louvre, and that just recently, has joined the ranks of museums on the Web. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) are not now on the Web, nor is Chicago's Art Institute. Some major regional institutions, however, do maintain impressive Web infrastructures: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and Sweden's National Museum of Art are prominent examples.

Most museum activity on the Web today is originating among the small- to mid-sized art collections, again primarily in North America and often in university-affiliated institutions. Examples include the Museum of the Oriental Institute (University of Chicago), The Institute of Egyptian Art and Archeology (University of Memphis), and the Michael T. Carlos Museum (Emory University: Atlanta, Georgia). While few of these smaller institutions bring forward more than a dozen or two art images in their self-presentations, they distinguish themselves by the breadth of their online commentary and by the energy with which they represent their programs, histories, areas of specialty, research projects, and other tokens of their operational reality and institutional success. (5)

Among the natural history, science, and technology museums, Web presentation activity is building steam rapidly. Until recently, in collective terms, these organizations had lagged a bit behind the fine arts institutions in taking to Web publishing modes. San Francisco's Exploratorium and the Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago), however, are prominent exceptions to this pattern: both were early and impressive digital media pioneers on the Web.

In some ways, the gradual migration of other science institutions --compared to the early adoption pattern of many of their art collection counterparts-- is not surprising.The holdings of an art museum tend to organize themselves somewhat more conveniently for online presentation than science-related materials (discrete artifacts aside). Art curators always have a dominant work or two in their collections, not to mention ready-to-hand intellectual categories --artist, period, style, country, etc.-- by which to choose works for digitizing. Often, specific art holdings drive the mode of presentation and the commentary that empowers it.

For science-oriented museums, the converse tends to be true: concepts and ideas often govern presentational strategy. As opposed to masterworks of art, the objects selected to illustrate, say, a science museum's presentation are frequently generic specimens that underscore points of commentary. In the Web infrastructures of most brick-and-mortar art museums, context and commentary serve to illuminate works of great individual power. Again, this distinction is intended only as suggestive analysis: it's not bulletproof. Visit the museums in the Resource List and test its validity for yourself.

Here s an impressive site at which to start. The Natural History Museum in London has developed a Web space that integrates richly realistic images and informative textual commentary with singular skill. The focus here is on distinctive elements of institutional identity. In addition to fascinating and well- illustrated information, you will find a well-framed strategic approach for building institutional prestige among the museum s diverse Web audience. The knowledge infrastructure here includes, among other elements, a high-level summary of the institution's expertise by discipline, nuts-and-bolts data on location and hours, information on the institution's education and outreach activities, and detailed commentary on its intellectual and architectural heritage. All of this is framed in a vivid photographic style that communicates a sense of the museum's vitality as a leading real-world institution. (6)



4. The virtual collections

With the virtual museums there are usually no such strong institutional agendas in play: the site's intellectual content is its sole raison d'êumflex;tre. The wealth of these virtual exhibititions on the Web today consistently illustrates how compelling this multimedia content can be. Many of these sites, especially those with a fine arts orientation, are particularly rich in images --often far more so than real- world art collections with a Web presence. A good example: Christus Rex, a California-based site where you will find more than a thousand images originating in the Vatican art collections. The works are frequently presented from multiple angles and at several levels of visual detail, and the creator, Michael Olteanu, is currently adding detailed textual commentary about the images he presents.

Australia-based ArtServe, among its many other features, supports a massive online repository (10,000 images) of prints from all periods. Essentially a compilation of the work of art historian Michael Greenhalgh, the exhibit is a world-class example of how to merge image and erudition online. Greenhalgh s richly illustrated tutorial on "The 'Palace' of Diocletian at Split" is a superb and informative point-of-entry here.

While arts-oriented virtual exhibitions tend to predominate at this time, there are first-rate examples in other disciplines as well. Within days of announcing its discovery of well-preserved paleolithic cave paintings near Ardèche, the French Cultural Ministry had mounted an impressive online discussion of the find, complete with extensive textual commentary and brilliant photographic images of the paintings. For another superb example of this burgeoning Web-genre, this one on a technology theme, look into The Virtual Museum of Computing developed by Jonathan Bowen at Oxford University.



5. Tomorrow: convergence ...and broader utility as information sources

Museum planners have not failed to note the successful efforts of the virtual exhibition creators. Most physical museums developing WWW infrastructures have built outward from a strategy of illustrating and commenting on key elements in their collections, or on strong departmental specialties. Expect to see more and more theme-anchored exhibits in the Web spaces of these museums. The success of many virtual collections --even those developed by enthusiasts with no formal credentials in the disciplines they profess en Web-- has established a performance standard here that real- world institutions will set out to equal and surpass.

Already we have several of these. The Genghis Khan virtual exhibit of the Royal British Columbia Museum, the Exploratorium's Diving into the Gene Pool, and the Field Museum's Life Over Time are leading exemplars of this type. More are sure to follow. Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, in fact, appears to be gearing a major portion of its Web space to online virtual exhibitions, a thematic focus much more in keeping with the real-world educational agendas of regional science centers than the illustrated-collections approach of many of the fine arts institutions. Many of these virtual exhibits are mounted in parallel with special exhibitions in the physical exhibition spaces of their sponsoring institutions.

The practice of creating collateral virtual-physical exhibitions has great potential for the sponsoring museum. For one thing, the virtual exhibit can continue to live on well after its physical concomitant has closed. Another advantage: a Web-resident virtual version of an exhibit ensures a much wider audience than a given exhibition could reach solely through its primary physical installation. For travelling art exhibitions in particular, which tend to be expensive productions, this hybrid exhibition approach could prove a telling factor in attracting corporate underwriters.

I also want to note one other pioneering advance in Web-based publishing that's just beginning to emerge in the museum community: the solicitation and incorporation into the exhibit itself of audience commentaries on the subject matter of an online presentation. Here the Web demonstrates its exciting potential for interactive use as (at the very least) a collective knowledge base. A case in point: the Exploratorium's Remembering Nagasaki, a photographic observance of the 50th anniversary of the bombing of that city. The exhibit's organizers are asking online visitors to leave comments on the event itself and related human issues. These comments are assembled as part of the exhibit.

For all its grim and moving undertones, Remembering Nagasaki is likely to prove a trendsetting Web experience. We'll see many more museum applications that involve their audiences in creating living exhibits in the months and years to come. There are similar approaches to involving audiences and market segmets possible in the realm of the corporate and institutional Web servers. These developments bear watching as well. Let s hope they push beyond promotional name-our- new-cyber-mascot contests.

In this discussion I have repeatedly stressed the critical importance of substantive information in a Web knowledge infrastructure. This focus invites an obvious rejoinder: how do audiences with a professional need for this information actually pinpoint it, short of "surfing" museum/institutional Web resources in the hope of serendipitously turning it up?

The answer: search utilities. At the level of local Web servers, such data base tools are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Ultimately online visitors will be able to search an institution's knowledge infrastructure from its Welcome page as if the infrastructure were a data base. Indeed, these search engines are here already: ArtServe, for instance, gracefully and rapidly manages access to its 10,000 images this way. As comparable, and considerably more powerful, search engines begin to appear in Web knowledge infrastructures, institutions will be encouraged to put even more substantive content there. Image-based searches are not beyond implementation either, although for the near term (on the Web, at least) this approach will depend on encoded text keys describing the image.

The next stage, of course, is global searching across the Web as a whole. A number of search engines do a creditable job of this already. Watch for more powerful capabilities --including dedicated information agents, or personal "knowbots"-- soon.



6. Why are so many corporations lagging behind on the Web?

Even though the museums are showing the way, and despite the evident potential of the Web as a mixed-media knowledge resource, many corporations appear to stuck in the way-cool billboard stage. Perhaps their leaders have yet to formulate how to transpose their most valuable intellectual capital into digital media form. Perhaps they simply aren't inclined to do so at this time: they may feel that the Web still needs to mature as a digital publishing channel to mainstream audiences.

Senior corporate managers and communication strategists in many companies --especially those that don't enjoy a natural affinity with younger markets-- simply may not be looking closely at the Web yet, even as they allow their mid-level operatives and technologists to experiment with this resource on their own. How else can we explain, for example, the remarkable persistence --in so many otherwise responsible organizations-- of the formal title of "Webmaster", that quaint and relentlessly gender- specific designation for the mid-manager in charge of the institution s Web infrastructure?

Clearly Webmaster is a vestigial title rooted in the sword-and-sorcery, computer-gaming mindset of the Web's early proselytizers. Now it s time to phase out this wishful self-designation, and to get serious about the Web s potential for organizing and presenting knowledge. Don t lose the creative vitality; just divert it into the service of organizational objectives as defined from the top down.

That will happen as corporate executives begin to see the value of the Web for publishing substantive information. Then the centers of responsibility for refining Web infrastructures will gradually move up in the organizational hierarchy and merge with the already highly-regarded function of organizing intellectual capital and institutional knowledge resources. Today, however, the museums and virtual collections on the Web are where many of the true pioneers in this brand of networked new media publishing are at their most creative and their most productive. They are showing how the magic carpet of the Web can accommodate complex and resonant patterns of knowledge, not just formulaic group-think hot-buttons.



NOTES