24 Hour Museum (Case study)
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Contents |
OVERVIEW
The 24 Hour Museum, founded in May 1999 was renamed Culture24 in November 2007. Initially funded by the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) through the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and now a not-for-profit enterprise, 24 Hour Museum acted as a virtual presence for the UK's museum, gallery and archive collections, many of whom otherwise would be invisible online.
About the 24 Hour Museum
24 Hour Museum comprised
- News and information about exhibitions
- A directory of over 4000 collections
- Ten City Heritage Guides
- Trails
- Show Me a mini site for children
The news and information about exhibitions were created by journalists in the 24 Hour Museum team, whilst the directory of collections was harvested using Web Services technology from the national Cornucopia database, managed by the MLA. This directory data is maintained by staff in individual institutions who have access to and editing permissions for this national repository of museums, library and archive collection descriptions and institutional data including location, opening hours and accessibility.
The City Heritage Guides were a product of work with Culture Online, a DCMS sponsored programme to build a digital bridge between education and culture. The guides were written by local people with real and virtual visitors in mind. Show Me, which maintains its own identity, includes games and trails based on museum and gallery artefacts and interactive features inviting comments from their (young) audience with supporting resources for teachers and parents.
As part of its evolution to Culture24 several of these features of the site remain, but are presented differently and/or have been renamed. City Heritage Guides are part of a broader, Places to Go feature, which makes use of Google maps, a technology not available when City Heritage Guides were first created. Trails are renamed Spliced to make explicit their cross-disciplinary nature. The mission remains to showcase the nation's collections of culture and drive online traffic and real visitors to local collections.
Related Digipedia article
Further information
Wikipedia entry for 24 Hour Museum
Culture24 website
Culture Online