Museum visitor numbers may be booming but the deadline for
participation in Culture Online is looming. James Rogers examines
the challenges of bringing arts and culture into classrooms and
homes via digital technology.
The days of school trips to the local museum could be numbered. If
the Government has its way the Culture Online project will help to
bring some of Britain's most valuable cultural treasures to
people's PCs via online exhibitions and digital television.
With £13m of funding for up to 30 targeted digital projects
available over the next two years, the Government has invited
organisations from both the public and private sectors to come
forward with ideas about how to deliver the scheme.
Time, however, is running out. Interested parties have until 30
August to outline how they can help to offer wider digital access
to the UK's cultural heritage.
The challenge for the Government and UK cultural institutions is to
place large amounts of digital data on the Internet, while ensuring
that it is easy to access and to update. Officials expect that, by
early next year, the Culture Online Web site will be offering
people the opportunity to access a range of digital projects.
A spokesperson for the Department for Culture, Media & Sport
said, "We are looking for content. We will be tendering for the Web
infrastructure to support the scheme later this year."
Although in its early stages, officials expect typical projects to
include the use of interactive technology and possibly digital TV
to enable people to view exhibitions. They must be acutely aware,
however, of the problems that befell the Public Records Office's
attempts to put information from the 1901 census on a Web site.
The site, which contains detailed information about 32 million
people who lived in England and Wales in 1901, was taken down
earlier this year after it was overwhelmed by unprecedented numbers
of visitors. It had been designed to cope with up to 1.2 million
hits a day, but on the day of its launch in January was receiving
more than one million hits an hour.
So analysts have warned that the digital projects offered via
Culture Online must be sufficiently robust to ensure that punters
get what they want.
"The possible high number of hits would have to be taken into
account, they would have to ensure that they have the appropriate
infrastructure in place with regard to the likes of Web servers,"
to deal with intense demand during peak times said Sue Clarke,
senior research analyst at Butler Group.
Admittedly, peak times could be more predictable and are likely to
revolve around the school day, although the problems with the
census Web site prove that public interest in the UK's history
should not be underestimated.
When Culture Online was launched at the Tate Modern in March 2001
the then culture secretary, Chris Smith, suggested, as an example,
that children might exploit digital technology to study Victorian
Britain.
According to Smith, a child might be able to download relevant
sources of text, photographs and source materials, take a virtual
tour through a Victorian street or factory and take part in
discussion groups with other children.
At this stage, however, it is unclear who would provide the
technology to develop these types of schemes, whether it would be
the cultural institutions themselves, private sector suppliers or
even consortia with a mixture of both.
While these ambitious schemes would undoubtedly be beneficial to
students, experts have also urged the Government to ensure that the
site's design is on a par with the intellectual quality of the
digital content.
Clarke said, "Managing the projects and making sure that people can
access the images would be important." Ease of navigation would
also be a key consideration, she said.
Industry experts have generally welcomed the scheme but also took
the opportunity to highlight some of the technical challenges it
presents.
Neil Beagrie, secretary of the Digital Preservation Coalition,
which represents cultural institutions such as the British Library
on the issue of preserving digital records for the UK's cultural
heritage, said, "This is an exciting initiative but the devil is in
the detail.
"The two key questions are, 'What standards will be used to create
the digital material?' and, 'Will the Department for Culture, Media
& Sport approach the development of services for the
preservation of digital material?'"
The Government appears, as yet, to have made no firm decisions
about digital standards on how, for instance, digital materials
should be stored. An official close to the Culture Online scheme
confirmed, however, that the scheme will take other government
projects into account.
"We will be looking at other government initiatives such as
National Curriculum Online [the government's official teacher Web
site] to ensure that we are in line with those." The interactive
digital projects will also be closely monitored when they are up
and running, she added.
However, the public sector, so often perceived as something of a
technology backwater, does at least have examples of best practice
to draw on when it comes to dealing with digital information.
The British Library, for example, is involved in a major project to
digitise its most important documents. The scheme, which involves
building a digital library store to help to create a national
digital library, has already been identified by experts as a
potential example of sound data management.
By linking directly into Curriculum Online and the National Grid
for Learning, Culture Online's interactive digital projects have
the potential to be even more ambitious, while they could also
provide an opportunity for IT companies to demonstrate the value of
their own digital technologies.
"It could give them an opportunity to see how their technology
could be used to the fullest potential," in the capture and storage
of digital images, said Clarke.
How many IT companies take up the Government's invitation to
participate in building this complex digital project remains to be
seen. IT managers at the UK's main museums and art galleries,
however, will certainly have to grapple with some tricky new IT
projects.
Further information:
www.cultureonline.gov.uk
Online cultural projects
Typical projects delivered through Culture Online could include:
- Interactive technology allowing people to see major exhibitions
at national museums. This could also involve the use of digital
television, the Web and links to other events around the
country
- A cross-curricular project on the impact of the Second World
War, incorporating a virtual tour of London during the blitz
designed, perhaps, by a computer games company and using recordings
of local people's wartime experiences. A digital storybook could
also be created to show the region has changed as a result of the
war
- A child studying Victorian Britain could download copies of
relevant sources of text, photographs and source materials in
addition to taking a virtual tour through a Victorian street or
factory and listen to dramatisations of children's experiences of
the workhouse
- Opportunities to take part in discussions with other
students.