Clear, short and simple!

Moderator: Antonio Hilario, Idéeclic, Canada

1. Sustainability and Portability of Digital Museum Applications
Daniel Pletinckx, Visual Dimension BVBA, Belgium

Digital technologies—and especially 3D technologies—have certainly the potential, when used properly, to make cultural heritage more attractive, enjoyable and understandable, so they are being introduced in our museums. However, how many of these museum applications are operational for more than five years? How many of them can be updated, exchanged with other museums or re-used in other exhibitions? The European Network of Excellence V-MusT.net on digital museum technology (v-must.net) is solving these issues, providing the methodology and tools to make such “virtual museums” stable, maintainable, updateable and re-usable. This means that not only are the financial and intellectual investment in such applications being much better preserved, but that these virtual museums can reach a much wider audience by re-use and re-integration in other museums and other exhibitions. Several test projects, implemented for high end museums, will be shown as example of this new approach. (presentation in English)

2. Simplifying without Being Simplistic: The Louvre’s Difficult Challenge
Catherine Guillou, Musée du Louvre, France

Although the Louvre is one of the most visited museums in the world, it is an intimidating institution, not easily accessible to all, inexhaustible to experts, dizzying to novices. Compounding this situation is the widening gulf between the so-called “legitimate” culture and another, difficult to describe, more popular, more cross-disciplinary, hybrid. Which raises a number of questions. Who will be the visitors of the next fifteen to twenty years? What type of relationship will they have with the museum? How will they be received? Naturally, the Louvre has no definitive answers to these questions, but has tried to anticipate them, re-examining its basic principles of mediation and communication, putting to one side the logic and constraints of its support mechanisms and focusing on one simple question: What do visitors need to know, first and foremost, at the time and place they find themselves? This is part of the “movement forward” principle that was the object of an editorial charter whose aim was to propose a new concept of visitor reception and hospitality, together with new relationship models. (presentation in French)

3. Mobile Technologies and School Visits: Contributions and Limitations
Marie-Claude Larouche, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada
Hugues Boily, McCord Museum, Montreal, Canada

The educational use of museum and heritage resources through mobile technologies, for a high school clientele, will be discussed. How can the tools of communication and entertainment become tools of learning in museums, exhibitions and sites of recognized heritage value? The development and educational use of mobile technologies in the context of non-formal education drive us to better understand the contributions they can make to the visitor’s experience. The discussion will also address the limitations of these technologies in relation to the needs and realities of school groups. Our presentation is based on two experiments: the first, a formative evaluation of the prototype application for iPod touch “McCord Museum” for on-site school visits; the second, the educational programs developed in relation to the new permanent exhibition at the McCord Museum, Montreal—Points of View, which offers two applications for mobile technologies. We will attempt to outline how the operation of these applications can contribute to the experience and understanding of the collections and sites, and to the development of historical thinking in high school students. (presentation in French)