Museum Informatics and Collaborative Technologies:The Emerging Socio-Technological Dimension ofInformation Science in Museum Environments

Paul F. MartyInformation Technology, Spurlock Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801.

The museum offers a starting point from which to exam-ine the fundamental nature of collaborative work andinterdisciplinary scholarship. This article examines thesocio-technological impact of introducing advanced in-formation technology into the Spurlock Museum, a mu-seum of world history and culture at the University ofIllinois. It addresses the implementation of such meth-odologies as computer-supported cooperative work(CSCW) and computer-mediated communication (CMC)in the museum environment. Discussions are illustratedwith examples and scenarios drawn from the SpurlockMuseum and emphasize the intimate relationship be-tween the museum’s social structure and informationsystems. Viewed in a holistic fashion, such studies ofcollaborative activities within the museum will helpshape the future of museum informatics, an emergingsub-discipline of the field of social informatics.

Introduction

A museum offers a unique environment from which tostudy the way in which knowledge is accumulated, ana-lyzed, and distributed by information professionals. A uni-versity museum, especially when located at a university thatactively encourages innovative and interdisciplinary re-search, offers an ideal setting from which to study the wayin which scholars and students from many different fieldsand disciplines interact and collaborate.

In 1996, we inaugurated an ethnographically-informedstudy of the Spurlock Museum at the University of Illinoisin which we are examining how the Spurlock’s profession-als and patrons have been affected by the introduction ofadvanced information technology into the museum environ-ment. The research agenda of this study has been the designand development of information systems that support thecollaborative production and use of the specialized knowl-edge characteristic of the museum environment. In this case,knowledge refers to information contained within the arti-facts themselves as well as information about the artifacts

held in the minds of museum professionals and affiliatedscholars. This study has raised many interesting questions:What impact do these information systems have on the wayin which such knowledge is shared? How are such systemsbest created? What role does advanced information technol-ogy play in the creation of such systems? How can suchsystems promote collaboration among different types ofusers of museum resources? How do these forms of collab-oration differ within an individual museum, between two ormore museums, among museum professionals, or betweenscholars, students, and the general public? To address thesequestions, our research has focused on an examination ofhow information technology enhances or otherwise affectscollaboration among the various users and producers ofmuseum-based knowledge.

Why Study Museums?

Around the world, information professionals have rec-ognized the museum environment to be an important emerg-ing field of study for information science. An extensivecorpus of literature now covers the rapidly changing infor-mation needs of museums and other institutions of culturalheritage (Thomas & Mintz, 1998; Jones-Garmil, 1997;MacDonald, 1992), highlighting the importance of this areafor future research and development. As museums work tobuild digital collections of artifact images and data, newneeds and challenges arise (Gladney, 1998; Lucas, 1998;Samuels, 1998). As these opportunities for growth are metand evaluated, the lessons learned can be applied to thestudy of information science in general. The museum-ori-ented literature of today—primarily focused on informationstorage and retrieval practices, issues of electronic classifi-cation and nomenclature, and database design and develop-ment—is in transition. In the near future, we will see thefield of museum informatics evolve to produce new analy-ses of the social impact of information technology on mu-seums, museum professionals, and museum users.

JASIS’ fiftieth anniversary provides an opportunity toreflect upon the role information technology will play in© 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE. 50(12):1083–1091, 1999 CCC 0002-8231/99/121083-09

encouraging collaboration among museum professionals.Over the next fifty years, studies of museum environmentswill allow information scientists to draw connections be-tween museum studies and diverse aspects of Library andInformation Science. For example, the growing concern thatthe digital information developed by museums be freelydistributed and made accessible for educational, profes-sional, and general interest uses (Bearman & Trant, 1998;Moen, 1998) has prompted many museum professionals toemploy the principles of social and organizational informat-ics, computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), andcomputer-mediated communication (CMC) in their day-to-day activities. Such a development in the traditionally con-servative world of museum studies offers a parallel to thetransitions currently on-going in the field of Library andInformation Science as a whole (see Haythornthwaite et al.,in this same issue).

One of the most interesting challenges we face today isto analyze and understand the social dimension that emergeswhen advanced information technology is integrated into anorganizational context. Museums offer an unusually inter-esting vantage point for many library and information sci-ence professionals precisely because museums have rarelybeen studied in this way (Rayward, 1998). Museums are ofparticular interest now as they begin to incorporate infor-mation technology into their work environments, raisingmany issues about the social organization of museums andmany questions about how collaborative technologies caneffect social change.

The Spurlock Museum: A Holistic Approach toMuseum Informatics

The Spurlock Museum at the University of Illinois inUrbana-Champaign offers an unusually interesting environ-ment for the kind of research discussed here. The Spurlockis a museum of world history and culture; it possesses acollection of approximately 40,000 cultural and ethno-graphic artifacts from diverse and varied historical timeperiods, ranging from ancient Sumeria to modern America.Staff members at the museum include ten permanent em-ployees, several dozen student assistants, and a handful ofaffiliated academic curators. Thus, in its size, the Spurlockrepresents a comprehensive, yet still manageable andreadily understood research environment. Moreover, as auniversity museum, the Spurlock is situated within an ex-tremely supportive academic environment that encouragesinnovative research into information science, such as thisstudy of technology-enhanced collaboration in a museumenvironment.

In 1996, the museum initiated a five-year program de-signed to prepare the museum, its staff, and its collectionsfor a complete move across campus to a brand-new facilityscheduled to open in the year 2001. As part of this program,the museum implemented a comprehensive reorganizationof its use of advanced information technology in the fall of

1996. Today, the technologies and information systems inuse at the Spurlock include the following features:

Artifact collections management.Extensive data on the mu-seum’s artifact collections is now contained within de-tailed computerized databases, developed through anethnographically-informed systems design methodology(Hughes et al., 1992; Sommerville et al., 1992; Hugheset al., 1994). Through these databases, museum staffmembers track detailed artifact specifications includingnomenclature classifications, physical dimensions, ma-terial analyses, geographical, cultural, and temporal des-ignations, accession records, artifact histories, exhibitinformation, scholarly remarks, condition and conserva-tion records, research notes, etc.

Museum administration support.The regular practices ofthe museum staff are currently supported by a series ofinterlocked and relational database systems, affectingand coordinating every aspect of museum operations.Advanced information systems help support, manage,and maintain crucial museum policies such as collec-tions management, registration, conservation proce-dures, packing and shipping, curation, exhibit design,and educational outreach as an integrated whole.

Digital image repository.A digital image repository isunder development that will contain digital representa-tions (including some 3D imaging) of all 40,000 artifactsin the museum’s collections.

Museum web site.Strong relations with the professional,academic, and educational community are maintainedthrough the museum’s web site (www.spurlock.ui-uc.edu) which allows exhibit designers to collaboratewith curators on gallery creation, scholars to browsedetailed records on the museum’s artifact holdings, thegeneral public to follow the progress of construction, andteachers to base lesson plans around digital artifact rep-resentations.

Over the past two and a half years, we have been able toobserve the effect of these new technologies upon the socialinfrastructure of the museum. The on-going technologicalinnovations have had a direct impact on the way in whichmuseum staff members interact internally among them-selves as well as the way they interact with external users ofthe museum’s resources. Internally, the energies of themuseum staff are mostly focused on: 1) the time consumingprocess of researching, completing, and updating artifactrecords in the database systems; 2) the task of sorting andselecting artifacts for display in the new facility; and 3) themaintenance of all information resources necessary for asuccessful move, including packing and shipping, registra-tion, and conservation procedures. Externally, the system isused by: 1) academic researchers, such as university schol-ars using the museum’s collections data to facilitate theirstudies; 2) professionals, like the architects and exhibitdesigners designing the new Spurlock museum; and 3)educators, including the many K–12 teachers who regularlyuse the system to bring the museum’s resources and hold-ings into the classroom.

1084 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE—October 1999

The rapid integration of advanced information technol-ogy into every aspect of museum procedures and practiceshas meant that in a very short period of time, the Spurlockhas experienced substantial and significant policy and pro-cedural modifications. In particular, these changes haveaffected the social dimension of the museum’s community.The role of information technology in museums is no longerconfined to data entry in collections management (Mac-Donald, 1991; Metropolitan Museum, 1968) or informationkiosks in exhibit halls (Hooper-Greenhill, 1995; Nash,1992; Vergo, 1989). Instead, it extends throughout the en-tire museum environment, leaving the work practices of nomember of the community unaffected. It is, in fact, theemerging social dimension of digital collaboration amongand between the museum professionals and patrons at theSpurlock Museum that provides so valuable an opportunityfor study.

The goal of this article is to examine the socio-techno-logical challenges faced by the information professionalworking with the increasingly digital museum and in par-ticular to explore the multi-faceted dimensions of CSCWand CMC as applied to museums, the potentials of whichare only now beginning to be realized. Through a study ofthe interplay between the museum’s social and technologi-cal systems and the way in which they affect communica-tion and collaboration among museum professionals andother affiliated scholars, we hope to advance the state ofknowledge about scholarly collaboration and knowledgesharing through advanced information technology. In theprocess, we hope to prove the value of the museum as atopic of study for information scientists.

In the following sections we briefly examine some of theareas of study that museum informatics embraces. Theyinclude cooperative problem solving, collaborative helpgiving, history-enriched digital records, user profiling, com-puter-supported cooperative learning, and asynchronouscollaboration among museum staff members and externalscholars and professionals. Each will be illustrated bymeans of actual or imaginary scenarios and examples drawnfrom the Spurlock Museum. The principles of scenario-based design (Carroll, 1995) have allowed us to explore thetheoretical potentials of new technologies while simulta-neously raising a set of concrete issues that anticipate thesocial and administrative needs of the museum and guidethe design of the technical systems necessary to supportthem.

Cooperative Problem Solving

The museum environment of yesterday was very differ-ent from the emerging computer-supported and highly-tech-nical environment in museums today. At high-tech muse-ums, dozens of employees may be working on integrateddatabase systems at any given moment, each on their ownparticular project, each with their own particular problems.CSCW technologies offer museums the potential to increaseefficiency, accuracy, and productivity (Twidale & Nichols,

1999; Hughes et al., 1994; Fisher & Reeves, 1992; Nardi &Miller, 1991; Grudin, 1989). By successfully incorporatingthese technologies, museum management systems will pro-vide mechanisms which will enable museum staff membersto collaborate simultaneously with their supervisors, otherstaff members, and external experts, solving problems asthey occur rather than postponing them and perhaps forget-ting them later. By providing better communication throughimproved collaboration techniques, museum staff membersbecome aware that they are not working in a vacuum. Otherusers are continuously and contemporaneously logged inand any one of these other users could be of potentialassistance.

As the following scenarios indicate, work at the Spurlocksuggests how a museum’s existing information systems maybe extended into a more collaborative environment forreporting, receiving, and giving help. Currently, when mu-seum staff members encounter problems, or when they findthemselves in a situation where they are not completelyconfident in their ability to proceed accurately, they canreport this easily with a single button click; moreover, thesystem can automatically direct these requests for assistanceto the appropriate experts. The addition of more advancedcollaborative methodologies, such as video links betweenmuseum staff and external experts, will increase the sys-tem’s capacity to assist in cooperative problem solving.

Scenario.A museum staff member analyzing a particularpiece of ancient pottery is uncertain whether to classifyit as Sumerian or Akkadian. Existing records, paper orelectronic, provide useless and/or conflicting data whilethere is no one else on the museum staff expert in thisfield. As a result of the digitization of the museum’scollections, the staff member can now transmit the per-tinent electronic data records to scholars for examina-tion, obviating the need for experts to travel to themuseum itself in all but the most difficult cases. Tofacilitate this process, the Spurlock Museum has estab-lished relationships with scholars, both on and off theUniversity of Illinois campus, who willingly participatein such solicited problem solving activities. In the pastyear, African experts have examined the entire Sub-Saharan African collection, Near Eastern experts havelooked over our cuneiform tablets, and Ancient Egyptianscholars have perused the museum’s collection of os-traka with Demotic script writing. They have helped thestaff to solve many difficult problems while using onlythe museum’s digital resources. In the future, we hope tobuild from these isolated incidents by implementing amore collaborative and more automatic method of elec-tronically requesting the help of external experts. Bymaintaining lists of experts in different areas, the systemwill be able to direct the unanswered questions posed bymuseum staff members to appropriate experts throughe-mail (and eventually video links), automatically at-taching electronic copies of the pertinent records. Theseexperts will then be able to examine the attached mate-rials and answer the museum’s questions at their conve-nience.

Scenario.A student employee working at the museum com-

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE—October 1999 1085

pleting artifact data records discovers that one particularrecord contains an inconsistency. The student is notqualified to deal with the problem and yet no supervisoris available to provide assistance. If proper cooperativeproblem solving technology is not integrated into themuseum’s internal computer systems, such errors typi-cally are left unresolved or, even worse, resolved incor-rectly by a guess on the part of the student. Therefore, toprevent damage to the system’s records, we have imple-mented cooperative problem solving techniques into theSpurlock’s databases that allow students to bring prob-lem records to the attention of the registrar, indicatingthe problem succinctly. The registrar can then examinethese problems, decide upon the appropriate action, andenter the decision into the system. Eventually, the sys-tem will be able to recognize these types of problems asthey occur and automatically notify the registrar of anysimilar errors.

We hope to extend the processes of cooperative problemsolving illustrated above from the simple to the complexthrough the development of a new integrated system, withbuilt-in collaborative aspects, covering all the museum’sstandard operating procedures. In this way, we believe thatthe different elements of the museum’s internal workings,standard operating procedures, and other day-to-day func-tions will eventually be made to work together throughinformation technology to facilitate better collaborationamong the various museum roles: conservator, registrar,curator, etc. By designing the systems to be integrated fromthe very moment of their inception, the resulting SpurlockIntegrated Museum Management Information System(SIMMIS) will put an end to the isolation of work com-monly found in museum environments and encourage bettercollaboration among the museum staff members and a moreprofessional museum environment as a whole.

Scenario.The museum acquires a new artifact which mustbe properly registered and entered into the appropriate da-tabase systems. The registrar creates a new record in theregistration system; when the registration record is com-plete, SIMMIS is automatically informed of the existence ofa new “incoming object.” SIMMIS then signals the curator,collections manager, assistant director, and other museumstaff members that a new artifact exists and must be pro-cessed through the museum’s systems. Meanwhile, SIM-MIS automatically runs several pre-scripted programs de-signed to warn museum employees of possible problems.For example, informed by the collections manager that thisnew acquisition may quite possibly be susceptible to infes-tation (by pests, mildew, mold, etc.), SIMMIS compares theartifact’s material type as entered in the database with themuseum’s integrated conservation system in order to learnabout all possible infestation problems. Having obtainedthis information, the system proceeds to call upon anotherlinked database, the Integrated Pest Management System, tolearn if any of the possible pests which could infest thisartifact are currently active in the museum. If so, SIMMISwarns the museum’s conservator that the artifact needs toreceive preventative treatment. Finally, SIMMIS informs

the registrar that the new artifact is ready to be accessionedinto the museum’s permanent collection. Following agree-ment from the Acquisitions Committee, the artifact is auto-matically accessioned by SIMMIS.

Collaborative Help Giving

As well as asynchronous cooperative problem solving ofthe kind dealt with above, synchronous collaborative helpgiving (Ackerman, 1994; Rouncefield et al., 1994; Kantor,1993; Twidale & Nichols, 1997) will be a focus of immenseimportance for information professionals working with mu-seums in the future. Users who are experiencing problemsworking with a system will be able to request and receivesimultaneous help from technical support specialists or frommore expert users (their supervisor, other staff members, orexternal experts) who are currently on-line. In such cases,the system must support direct communication between theuser and the expert help-giver. Moreover, the expert musthave the ability to observe what the user is currently doing;it will be especially useful when each can easily see what ison the other’s screen. Eventually, users will be able to sharesearch sets and search histories collaboratively, especiallyuseful when dealing with the results of complicatedsearches. We have not yet implemented such collaborativehelp giving in the Spurlock Museum; however, the follow-ing examples demonstrate the capabilities we plan to intro-duce in the near future.

Scenario.A museum staff member is completing a briefmaterial analysis report for a particular artifact, whichwill later be used as a basis for a more detailed conser-vation report by the museum’s conservator. This partic-ular staff member can recognize and report accurately ononly the most obvious situations: breaks, cracks, missingpieces, etc. It takes extensive training for most employ-ees to correctly identify a patina, distinguish betweenactive or passive corrosion, or observe the subtleties ofbronze disease. This situation can result in inaccuratematerial analysis reports that may temporarily misleadthe conservator in formulating a later diagnosis. Cur-rently, the Spurlock Museum avoids this problem byprohibiting anyone but those assistants personallytrained by the conservator herself to enter material anal-ysis reports. In the future, we hope to implement acollaborative video link between worker and conservatorto provide assistance in difficult situations, possibly in-volving a video file from which illustrated examples ofpast material analyses can be retrieved for instructionalpurposes.

Scenario.A new user of the museum’s computer systemshas a question about the technical workings of a pro-gram: how to perform a search, for example, or how tooperate on more than one record at a time. There is noone around to provide assistance and he or she does notknow how to proceed. Currently, the user in such asituation must rely on the integrated help system (asimple series of context-sensitive text files), which isnon-collaborative and often does not fully address the

1086 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE—October 1999

user’s questions. Consequently, users are forced to ad-dress their questions directly to the computer supportspecialist in person, a method that often results in wastedtime for both parties, since the user generally cannotproceed until his or her question has been answered. Inthe future, we will have a new collaborative help systemto allow users to remotely contact the computer supportspecialist for help and allow the specialist to examine theuser’s screen from afar, assess the situation, and recom-mend action. Moreover, this collaborative help systemcan provide the functionality for the technical supportspecialist to record these responses as illustrated exam-ples for future use by others in similar situations.

History-Enriched Digital Records

Once museums embark upon the path of integratingcollaborative methodologies into their work environment, itbecomes extremely important that a careful history be keptof every modification made to the artifact records by stu-dents, staff, or scholars. Referred to by Hill (1994) as“history-enriched,” this technique addresses the inherentadvantage paper documents have over their digital counter-parts—that they leave a paper trail while digital recordsusually have no such built-in redundancy. Unless explicitlyspecified in the program schematics, deleted or overwritteninformation in database records is unrecoverable. Moreover,usually no information exists to inform the curious as to“who changed what, when.” The Spurlock Museum tooksteps to address this need very early in the developmentcycle of the museum’s database system. The museum’sinformation systems now record each modification as it ismade, producing a history that allows all changes made tothe artifact system to be traced. The following scenariosdemonstrate the importance and research potential of such amodification history for records.

Scenario.The registrar, performing quality control on stu-dent data entries, discovers that a record contains abizarre error: the artifact’s cultural designation, whichshould have read “Prehistoric: Neolithic,” actually reads“Norwegian: Netherlands.” Without a modification his-tory, even if system backups were available, it wouldimpossible to determine who changed the cultural des-ignation, why, or when.

Scenario.A curator, browsing a list of Native Americanartifacts, discovers that one of the two records represent-ing a pipe (one record for the bowl and one for the stem)is missing. An expanded search of the system locates therecord and reveals that the inventory number for the pipestem has been unexpectedly changed. The modificationhistory allows the curator to discover who made thischange, when, why, or under what authority.

Scenario.The conservator, working on a particular artifact,notices that although the database, as well as an olderpaper file, records the artifact’s “Material Type” asivory, the real material is actually bone. When the con-servator corrects the error in the record, the modificationhistory ensures that anyone looking at this record in thefuture (perhaps with a mind to change it back to ivory)

will know exactly who changed the Material Type field,and that the change was made with authority.

User Profiling

The primary problem faced by system users for anydatabase system is that of knowing how to search effec-tively, finding all relevant data with minimum effort. Toaccomplish this efficiently, users often need to possessdetailed knowledge of the database itself, especially of validsearch terms. We cannot assume that all users of any sys-tem, especially novice users, will understand the innerworkings of the database well enough to make intelligentuse of “insider information” known only to the experiencedsystem users. One way in which CSCW techniques can helpsuch users is through the implementation of user profiles(Myaeng & Korfhage, 1990; Jones, 1988; Rich, 1979).Simply put, such a system recognizes and reacts to the factthat different users will have different needs.

For the Spurlock Museum, it has become clear from thevarying needs of the users currently accessing the ArtifactCollections Management System that effective use of theartifact database by large numbers of different users willnecessitate the creation of extensive user profiles containingdetailed information on the needs of each user. Differentusers will need different access to either all or some of themuseum’s data. Just as in a real museum, visitors to thevirtual museum’s electronic data repository will wish toencounter the available data differently; some will want tobrowse the system freely while others will want the equiv-alent of a personal guided tour (Bearman & Trant, 1998).Collaboration among teachers, students, museum staff, ac-ademics, and other professionals will be necessary to ensurethat everyone gets the correct type of information needed.The best way of maintaining records on how differentindividuals make use of the same electronic data repositorywill be to build extensive profiles on the museum’s systemusers. The following scenarios provide three very differenttypes of illustrations of how we plan to implement userprofiling in the Spurlock’s data systems.

Academic.It is most likely that the typical academic willbenefit from a very open interface with little guidancebeyond help with basic searching. Academics are likelyto prefer to generate their own contexts for artifact data,working with the raw data only. Nevertheless, buildingprofiles of the specific interests of each academic userwill enable the system to provide suitable guidance whenneeded. Academic users, for instance, may very wellwish the system to assist them in building a new searchbased on their previous research results. Moreover, bycarefully observing the needs of academic users, thesystem may be able to prompt them with previouslyunexplored yet potentially beneficial lines of researchthat they may not yet have considered.

Professional.The professional user is often interested onlyin very specific information relevant to certain special-ized needs of which the system is more likely than not to

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE—October 1999 1087

be unaware. Museum exhibit designers and buildingarchitects offer good examples. Exhibit designers mayneed to determine the relative sizes of Roman terracottastatues, for example, in order to prepare an attractiveassortment for display in a particular case. It would bedifficult for the system, merely by observation, to buildan accurate profile of these users’ needs based on sucharcane specifications. However, if the user were to pro-vide the system with enough basic information about hisor her own personal needs (e.g., “I’m looking for a groupof statues that will match a particular color scheme”),then a profile could be developed which would help theprofessional user with future database searches.

Educational. Users with educational interests, such asteachers or students, will approach the system in yetanother way. Few students will want to wade throughone detailed record after another in search of relevantinformation, and few teachers will need only the spe-cialized information desired by the professionals. In-stead, the system, guided by a particular educationalprofile, will have to direct these users to relevant infor-mation in an environment that is user-friendly and re-quires a minimum of effort on the part of the teacher orstudent. A teacher, for example, who informs the systemthat his or her class is studying ancient Egypt wouldreceive a list of topics relevant to Egyptian history withcertain key representative artifacts as illustrations. Theteacher could then choose to fine-tune these results,requesting greater detail and more artifact informationon, for instance, the principles of mummification or thebuilding of the pyramids. Once this information is storedin the teacher’s profile, students of this particular teacherwho access the Artifact Collections Management Systemwould find pre-scripted lesson plans, devised by thesystem based on the teacher’s specifications, that wouldwalk them through the available resources, presentingartifact information that supplements their studies whilesuppressing information irrelevant to their needs.

Computer-Supported Cooperative Learning

Profiling, as indicated above, can be an important aspectof on-line educational outreach. The opportunities affordedby collaboration technologies for education (Fowell &Levy, 1995; McConnell, 1994) have not gone unnoticed bythe museum community (Bearman & Trant, 1998). TheSpurlock Museum is concerned to make the best possibleeducational use of its electronic museum archives. To thisend, the museum is currently working with several K-12schools to develop programs that focus explicitly on theneeds of teachers and students. Teachers interested in hav-ing their pupils study African and Indonesian masks, forexample, or unique musical instruments from around theworld can request that online educational resources basedon these interests be designed using the museum’s virtualartifacts. Thus, the museum’s education department cancreate programs aimed directly at the specific needs of theseusers.

The educational function of the Spurlock as a virtualmuseum is of particular interest because the only connection

K-12 schools will have with our museum over the next twoyears, while the building is closed to the public, will bethrough the virtual environment. It is anticipated that over5,000 students per year will access the system, searching forartifact data for class projects and other homework assign-ments. The Spurlock Museum plans to build on its existingrecord of working with the schools in the community tomake artifact and museum data available on-line to students,as the following examples illustrate.

Example.Recently, the Spurlock Museum participated in anoutreach program designed to determine whether stu-dents unable to travel to the museum itself could effec-tively make use of digital artifact data integrated withtheir current classroom activities. The sixth-grade classat a local middle school—frequent visitors to the muse-um—engaged in a problem-based learning exercise onancient Egyptian history and archaeology. Presentedwith an alleged specimen of Egyptian cartonnage (theouter wrapping of an ancient Egyptian mummy), thesestudents assumed the roles of museum professionals andresearched the culture, beliefs, and practices of ancientEgypt, as well as the rules, regulations, and practices ofmuseum professionals, in an attempt to determine theauthenticity of their cartonnage specimen and its rele-vance to the museum’s ancient collections. For financialreasons, the school was unable to arrange a tour to themuseum to allow the students access to the museumartifacts. Therefore, for the duration of this two-weekproject, approximately 80 sixth-graders communicatedwith the Spurlock Museum staff through e-mail andtelephone conversations and accessed the museum’s da-tabase through a specially designed web page that pre-sented comparative data on a series of representativecartonnage fragments owned by the museum. Theproject was so successful that it is being repeated thisyear and several other schools have requested our par-ticipation in similar projects.

Example.A group of high school students from Chicagoused the museum’s on-line resources to develop theirown instructional web pages in an integrated classroomactivity linking history with chemistry. For one popularproject, the students examined the world-famous friezepanels from the Parthenon Temple on the AthenianAcropolis. The Spurlock Museum owns one of the ear-liest, best preserved, and most complete plaster castcopies of the Parthenon Frieze. These casts were createdbefore the original marble panels were removed from theParthenon and taken to London by Lord Elgin, wherethey are currently on display in the British Museum. Bycomparing the condition of the original marbles with theSpurlock’s earlier plaster cast copies, the students wereable to analyze the rate of chemical erosion and extent ofphysical vandalism in the frieze panels. Much of thiswork was done on-line and their results were madeavailable over the Internet.

These particular projects demonstrate the valuable edu-cational impact digitized museum resources can have onK–12 schools. Moreover, our experience shows that the

1088 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE—October 1999

virtual museum format provides flexible and unique ap-proaches to allowing different students different access tocommon electronic artifact data. From a common underly-ing repository of electronic artifact information, we canpresent data tailored to the needs and interests of differentschool children. While students in one grade level, forexample, may prefer having access only to digital photo-graphs of several choice artifacts in certain exciting topicareas, students at a higher grade level may very well desireaccess to detailed statistical information about hundreds ofartifacts. Thus, the same database of virtual artifact data canbe presented in different fashions to different students ac-cording to their educational needs.

Computer-Mediated Communication

A great portion of current CMC research is focused uponthe creation of virtual communities and on the interactionamong individuals within those communities (Kiesler,1997; Jones, 1995). Current research in the field of CMCwill have important consequences for information profes-sionals working in museum environments. Successful col-laboration among museum professionals will depend greatlyon the will of the individual to take the initiative in creating,providing, disseminating, and sharing artifact information;moreover, all members of the virtual museum communitymust share the burden of producing digital artifact dataresources equally. The application of results from CMCresearch into the role of the individual could prompt thevirtual museum community to integrate every individual,whether museum professional or member of the generalpublic, into the content creation process, thereby changingthe user from a passive information recipient to an activelyinvolved contributor. Eventually, collaboration among vir-tual museums around the world will become a social effortwhere every individual user of museum data plays a role assignificant as any other individual or any institution.

Example.Recently, the Spurlock Museum encouraged aca-demics and other scholars, regardless of location, toexamine our collections on-line using the Virtual Spur-lock Museum. From this, we have begun to observe howresearchers react and interact with our museum profes-sionals. For instance, specialists in African art examinedthe records for over 200 artifacts from sub-SaharanAfrica over the Internet and sent detailed notes viae-mail for each and every artifact to the museum staff.These data were discussed with other African art experts,then integrated into the museum database systems,thereby automatically updating the Internet version. It isour hope that the presence of on-line comments from oneparticular expert will encourage other experts in thatsame area to submit their own comments and contribu-tions to the museum’s artifact data resources.

Example.The task of deciding which artifacts will be placedon display, how they will be grouped, and where in thenew museum they will be located is remarkably complex(Hooper-Greenhill, 1992). It is therefore very important

that every individual working on the design of any newmuseum have access to up-to-date information aboutartifact arrangements. At the Spurlock Museum, as thecuratorial staff members plan each gallery in the newmuseum, they specify in the Artifact Collections Man-agement System exactly which artifacts will be dis-played where in the new building. Then, when a virtualvisitor accesses the online version of the new SpurlockMuseum, the system links to the museum’s internaldatabases and automatically arranges artifacts on-lineaccording to the available gallery schematics. In thisfashion, accurate and timely information about where thevarious artifacts will be exhibited in the new facility isdisplayed dynamically to architects, exhibit designers,and interested members of the general public. Thus,years before the Spurlock actually opens to the public,interactive CMC technologies allow planners, designers,or the curious visitor to browse the plans for the newmuseum and virtually visualize artifact locations just asthey will be in the new building.

Example.The Spurlock Museum holds many artifacts of atype similar to those in other museums. A series of Atticred-figure vases, all from the same archaeological site,may be divided among many different museums. Aseach of these museums digitize their collections infor-mation, museum professionals can take advantage of thepotential offered by CMC technologies to link thesedisparate artifact resources together through web-basedhypermedia. Eventually, researchers studying or visitorsbrowsing collections data for any museum will be able toseamlessly merge from one museum’s holdings to an-other, following trails of similar or otherwise relatedartifacts.

The museum of the future, augmented by the techniquesof CMC, will go a long way to eliminating the exasperatingdrawbacks of distance between museums, museum profes-sionals, museum users, and related experts. A scholar fromLondon examining over the Internet the rich collections ofthe Hermitage will be able to collaborate and interact,possibly via a 3D virtual display, with a fellow researcherfrom Los Angeles studying the same collection. Students,teachers, academics, scholars, and members of the generalpublic, armed with only a computer and an Internet connec-tion, will be able to browse the collections of every museumworld-wide, including those artifacts which are not cur-rently on display. Moreover, they will have immediateaccess to the accumulated knowledge of a wide variety ofexperts in every field from every country. Virtual visitorsphysically located thousands of miles apart will stand nextto each other in 3D representations of archaeological sitesso realistic as to be indistinguishable from the real thing,handle 3D virtual representations of priceless artifacts ren-dered with laser mapping accurate to the micron, exchangedata files, multimedia presentations, and other informationresources with the ease of a handshake, and collaborate inways never before possible.

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE—October 1999 1089

Conclusions

Throughout the course of this discussion, we have hadthe opportunity to reflect upon the role information technol-ogy can play in encouraging collaboration among museumprofessionals and museum users. We have seen many ex-amples of the opportunities for study which museums affordinformation scientists, and it is our hope that such analyseswill advance the state of knowledge in the field of informa-tion science about collaborative technologies in general.

Of course, difficulties will arise: integrating advancedinformation technology into the museum environment isnothing if not hard work; doing it successfully requiresdedicated information professionals working side by sidewith museum professionals for long periods of time; exten-sive ethnographic evaluations will be necessary just to de-termine if the right steps are being taken; and every museumwill represent a unique situation for study, because allmuseums’ needs and challenges are different. In spite ofthese difficulties, museums offer a vast, important, andvirtually untapped environment for information profession-als. They provide a starting point from which to examine thefundamental nature of collaborative work and interdiscipli-nary scholarship.

As museums around the world recognize the importanceof integrating systems for collaborative and interdiscipli-nary research, studies of how information systems such asthese are developed and used will prove useful not just toany one particular museum but to all institutions of culturalheritage and to all who study collaborative technologies andmethodologies. Surely the next 50 years will see results andimplications currently unimaginable spring forth from thework of museum researchers. At the Spurlock, we willcontinue to study our museum as a test case for the imple-mentation of collaborative technologies and informationscience in the museum environment as we look forward towhat the next 50 years will bring.

References

Ackerman, M.S. (1994). Augmenting the organizational memory: A fieldstudy of answer garden. Proceedings of CSCW 1994 (pp. 243–252).

Bearman, D. (Ed.) (1995). Hands on hypermedia and interactivity inmuseums: Selected papers from the Third International Conference onHypermedia and Interactivity in Museums. Pittsburgh: Archives andMuseum Informatics.

Bearman, D., & Trant, J. (Eds.). (1998). Museums and the web. Pittsburgh:Archives and Museum Informatics.

Bentley, R., Hughes, J., Randall, D., Rodden, T., Sawyer, P., Shapiro, D.,Sommerville, I. (1992). Ethnographically-informed systems design forair traffic control. In CSCW ’92: Proceedings of the Conference onComputer Supported Cooperative Work.

Button, G., Harper, R. (1996). The relevance of “work practice” for design.Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of CollaborativeComputing, 4, 263–280.

Carroll, J. (1995). Scenario-based design: envisioning work and technologyin system development. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Fisher, G., & Reeves, B. (1992). Beyond intelligent interfaces: Exploring,analyzing, and creating success models of cooperative problem solving.Applied Intelligence, 1, 311–332.

Fowell, S., & Levy, P. (1995). Developing a new professional practice: Amodel for networked learner support in higher education. Journal ofDocumentation, 51.

Gladney, H. (1998). Digital access to antiquities. Communications of theACM, 41, 49–57.

Grudin, J. (1989). Why groupware applications fail: Problems in designand evaluation. Office: Technology and People, 4, 245–264.

Haythornthwaite, C., Bowker, G., Jenkins, C., Rayward, W.B. (1999).Mapping the dimensions of a dynamic field. Journal of the AmericanSociety for Information Science, This Issue.

Heath, C., Luff, P. (1991). Collaborative activity and technological design:Task coordination in the London underground control rooms. In Pro-ceedings of ECSCW ’91.

Hill, W. (1994). History-enriched digital objects: Prototypes and policyIssues. The Information Society, 10, 139–145.

Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1995). Museum, media, message. London: Rout-ledge.

Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1992). Museums and the shaping of knowledge.London: Routledge.

Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1991). Museum and gallery education. Leicester:Leicester University Press.

Hughes, J., King, V., Rodden, T., Andersen, H. (1994). Moving out fromthe control room: Ethnography in system design. In Proceedings ofCSCW ’94. (pp. 429–439), New York: ACM Press.

Hughes, J., Randall, D., Shapiro, D. (1992). Faltering from ethnography todesign. In Proceedings of CSCW ’92 (pp. 115–122), New York: ACMPress.

Jones-Garmil, K. (Ed.). (1997). The wired museum: Emerging technolo-gies and changing paradigms. Washington, DC: American Associationof Museums.

Jones, K.S. (1988). User models, discourse models, and some others.Computational Linguistics, 14, 98–100.

Jones, S.G. (Ed.). (1995). Cybersociety: Computer-mediated communica-tion and community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Kantor, P.B. (1993). The adaptive network library interface: A historicaloverview and interim report. Library Hi-Tech, 43, 81–92.

Kiesler, S. (Ed.). (1997). Culture of the Internet. Mahwah, NJ: LawrenceErlbaum.

Kling, R., Rosenbaum, H., Hart, C. (1998). Social informatics in informa-tion science: An introduction. Journal of the American Society forInformation Science, 49, 1047–1052.

Koester, S. (1993). Interactive multimedia in American museums. Wash-ington, DC: Archives & Museum Informatics.

Lees, D. (1993). Museums and interactive multimedia. Cambridge: Mu-seum Document Association.

Lucas, R. (1998). Digital imaging: How libraries, museums, and otherimage banks are managing a digital world. Syllabus, 11, 39–46.

Metropolitan Museum of Art. (1968). Computers and their potential ap-plications in museums. New York: Arno Press.

MacDonald, G.F. (1992). Change and challenge: Museums in the infor-mation society. In Museums and communities (pp. 158–181), Washing-ton, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

MacDonald, G.F. (1991). The museum as information utility. MuseumManagement and Curatorship, 10, 305–311.

McConnell, D. (1994). Implementing computer supported cooperativelearning. London: Kogan Page.

Moen, W. (1998). Accessing distributed cultural heritage information.Communications of the ACM, 41, 45–48.

Myaeng, S., & Korfhage, R. (1990). Integration of user profiles: Modelsand experiments in information retrieval. Information Processing andManagement, 26, 719–738.

Nardi, B.A., & Miller, J.R. (1991). Twinkling lights and nested loops:Distributed problem solving and spreadsheet development. InternationalJournal of Man-Machine Studies, 34, 161–184.

Nash, C.J. (1992). Interactive media in museums: Looking backwards,forwards, and sideways. Museum Management and Curatorship, 11,171–184.

1090 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE—October 1999

Rayward, W.B. (1998). Electronic information and the functional integra-tion of libraries, museums and archives. In E. Higgs (Ed.), History andelectronic artefacts (pp. 207–224). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rich, E. (1979). User modeling via stereotypes. Cognitive Science, 3,329–354.

Roucefield, M., Hughes, J., Rodden, T., Viller, S. (1994). Working with“constant interruption”: CSCW and the small office. In Proceedings ofCSCW ’94 (pp. 275–286), New York: ACM Press.

Samuels, G. (1998). The museum digital licensing collective: Serving allmuseums. Museum News, 77, 41–65.

Schmidt, K., Bannon, L. (1992). Taking CSCW seriously: Supportingarticulation work. Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journalof Collaborative Computing, 1, 7–40.

Sommerville, I., Rodden, T., Sawyer, P., Bentley, R., Twidale, M. (1992).Integrating ethnography into the requirements engineering process. InIEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering (pp. 165–173), Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press.

Suchman, L. (1987). Plans and situated actions: The problem of human-machine communication. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Thomas, S., & Mintz, A. (Eds.). (1998). The virtual and the real: Media inthe museum. Washington: The American Association of Museums.

Twidale, M.B., & Nichols, D.M. (1999). Computer supported cooperativeworking in the information search and retrieval process. Annual Reviewof Information Science and Technology, 31, 259–319.

Twidale, M.B., Nichols, D.M., & Paice, C.D. (1997). Browsing is acollaborative process. Information Processing and Management, 33,761–783.

Twidale, M.B., Randall, D., & Bentley, R. (1994). Situated evaluation forcooperative systems. Transcending Boundaries: Proceedings of CSCW’94, Chapel Hill: ACM Press.

Vergo, P. (1989). The new museology. London: Reaktion Books.Weil, S. (Ed.) (1996). Museums for the new millenium: A symposium for

the museum community. Washington, DC: American Association ofMuseums.

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE—October 1999 1091