The Internet of Historical Things: Museums go Online

Museums and galleries were involved with digital technologies long before Covid-19 broke out. However, lockdowns pushed museums to experiment with ways of reaching out to the public, remotely. Digital Transformation played a key role with Virtual and Augmented Reality applications and virtual tours being some of the means that museums chose to bridge the distance between their isolated audience.

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Internet of historical things?

The term “Internet of Historical Things” was suggested by Digiart, a Horizon 2020 program which aimed at constructing immersive 3D monuments and entire story worlds.

This is rather a pun, and perhaps a nudge to the “Internet of Things”, a widely used term in the field of Information and Communications Technologies referring to any kind of interconnected physical devices that connect to the Internet. In this case, the goal is to take advantage of technological innovations such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and virtual tours to create online historical worlds and real-feel historical encounters.

People have the opportunity to explore monuments and museum exhibitions from the comfort of their homes, which was especially helpful during this cultural -covid- crisis: museums had to switch to online content or face the danger of being forgotten.

Existing Applications

• Virtual Tours

Many institutions like the Dali Theatre-Museum and the Louvre offered comprehensive 360° virtual tours to navigate their exhibitions.

Screenshot of the Dali Theatre-Museum

• Virtual Reality

Google Cardboard, Google's virtual reality viewer lets you travel to the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin to learn all about the Jurassic giant Giraffatitan and see it witness it coming back to life.

While the Louvre lets you meet Mona Lisa with a VR app!

• Augmented Reality

Google arts along with the National Museum of India digitized its miniature painting collection “Life in Miniature”. A mobile phone and a simple flat surface can bring Indian heritage to your home through an Augmented Reality Pocket Gallery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RMcUJUznKg

Public Reception

There have been doubts over virtual museums, since these might undermine the authenticity factor of cultural heritage. There are also concerns around ownership, copyright and value.

However, these concerns had to be put aside for the need for a rapid covid response. The cultural sector had to find the means to make history available to everyone during these trying times.

New technologies opened up exciting innovative possibilities and were welcomed by the public. This success results from the features of these applications:

• Accessible online anytime and from anywhere

• Highly immersive

• Engaging and Interactive

Here are 90 more virtual museums!