Web-Designer for virtual museums

4. Upload the database

5. Databases and the publication of data on the Internet

6. Databases and the publication of data on the Internet

7. Databases and the publication of data on the Internet The advantages of using such technologies are: Dynamically edit, change, or add any content of a Web page; Respond to user queries or data submitted from HTML forms; Access any data or databases and return the results to a browser; Customize a Web page to make it more useful for individual users; Provide security and access control to different Web pages; Tailor your output to different types of browsers; Minimize the network traffic.

8. Practice

9. General Information

10. Fundamental objectives of a database

11. Fundamental objectives of a database

12. COMPASS – Database of the British Museum

13. The adult section is very well organized and there are several searching facilities depending on the area of interest of the visitor. Moreover, there are many useful links and also background information on almost every item. There are online tours on a variety of subjects and there is also information about current exhibitions. The online tours cover a wide range of topics, starting from New Tours and The British Museum to collections referring to Africa, Americas, Europe, Greece, Rome, Egypt and so on. Apart for the fact that each object featured is illustrated with high quality scalable images for detailed study, there is also plenty of information about the objects, as well as references and links to related objects. The database was designed for the general visitor and thus the information has been written accordingly. Therefore, technical terms are explained in glossary links and if one is interested in learning more about an item, most of the articles give references to books written or recommended by the Museum’s curators.

14. Children’s COMPASS was launched in February 2002 and uses a search engine designed for children. Apart from the children’s tours and the articles written for 7-11 year old pupils, there are also classroom activities and quizzes, as well as an Ask the Expert facility. The online tours are specially written to cover topics from the UK National Curriculum, including Literacy, Numeracy, Science and Art as well as History. There are also examples of children’s work, online animations, games and puzzles, web links and reading lists. In addition to the online tours, there is also a Search engine that allows children to look for information from the following areas: Africa, the Americas, Anglo-Saxon England, Asia, Ancient Egypt, Europe, Ancient Greece and Roman Britain.

15. Children’s COMPASS was planned so that children with disabilities could use it as well. The worksheets have a set of teaching suggestions for how they may be adapted, both for children with learning difficulties, as well as for those who need extension activities. For those with reading difficulties, there is software available for reading the text on children’s COMPASS aloud. Children’s COMPASS has been designed from the outset with visually impaired users in mind (ttp://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compass/ixbin/hixclient.exe?_IXDB_=compass&search-form=graphical/edu/main.html&submit-button=search). Thus a text-only version of most screens enables screen-readers to browse, while text size and colour can be easily changed using the browser tools. The site has been designed and evaluated by the New Media Unit at the British Museum, in consultation with local primary schools and with the advice and assistance of the Museum Education Department.

16. According to Tim Jacques from the New Media Unit, the following worked on COMPASS website: Head of New Media – project manager Content Manager – responsible for the content on the site Imaging Manager – responsible for the images on the site Creative Editor – responsible for all the text Design Manager – responsible for the design of the site Access Officer – responsible for all access issues for the site Education Editor – responsible for the editorial content on the Children’s COMPASS site Imaging Assistant – helping the Imaging Manager and also HTML coding for some pages Support Officer – administration for COMPASS Project I.S. Support – IT support for the project, though not full time on COMPASS alone

17. In addition, there were also Editorial Assistants to help with editing the text, and curators and freelancers who wrote the object text. Also, there were a number of interns who worked for fixed periods of time, usually to compliment their studies. The technology for the site and delivering it to the web was provided by a company called System Simulation Ltd. Their Index+ (www.ssl.co.uk) software provided the database. System Simulation Ltd. offers a comprehensive package of support arrangements tailored to user requirements. Training is provided for application builders, database administrators and end-users. Tools for importing data from a wide range of third party files and databases to Index+ applications are also available. Information management systems frequently require support for a range of specialist functions as well as the basic storage and retrieval facilities.

18. The application tools provided with Index + are designed so that appropriately tailored systems are very easy to make, use and maintain. The facilities provided by this software include: Interfaces to newswire systems Storage management for large text and image archives Interfaces to Point of Sale equipment Interfaces to EDI systems Interfaces to scanning and OCR software Script-based multimedia authoring Loan management Exhibition design Index+ has been successfully integrated with RDBMS and other more specialised applications.

19. System Simulation Ltd. has implemented the British Museum’s new Merlin collections management system based on MUSIMS. Data have been imported from the previous system and the data structures and procedures have been upgraded in line with modern and international museum standards. The Terminology Client includes thesauri developed by the British Museum and other international standards. The Unicode facility enables the museum to catalogue and search using historical and non-European scripts. Merlin provides data and resources for the COMPASS public access system through an integrated Index+ Content Management System, also supplied by System Simulation Ltd. System Simulation Ltd. worked closely with the COMPASS team and supplied the software architecture for the COMPASS project. Thus, the Content Development System was used for the creation and management of all content including selected data imports from Merlin (the Museum’s collection management system) and the Publishing Pipelines delivering content to all versions of COMPASS on the web and to the specially designed touch-screen consoles in the Reading Room.

20. COMPASS offers a variety of interfaces for exploring the Museum’s collections in new ways, therefore enabling visitors to get a better understanding of objects and their contexts. Children’s COMPASS find specially designed features for children, as well as parents, teachers and schools. The programs presented there are aimed at the specific needs of both teachers and children, and the subject areas of the UK National Curriculum. There is also a high-access text-only version provided for visually impaired visitors. For the outstanding efforts to ensure that the website is accessible to visually impaired people, The British Museum – COMPASS won the Visionary Design Award 2002 from the National Library for the Blind.

21. LOUVRE Data Bases Four online databases are accessible via the Louvre Web site: Atlas The Inventory of the Department of Prints and Drawings La Fayette Database of American Art Joconde

22. ATLAS Atlas is a data base allowing the consultation of the works of art exhibited in the Louvre, around 30000 works of art. The web user, like the visitor will find the information traditionally shown on the labels next to the works of arts. It is drafted under the responsibility of the museum's curators. Because the information is written in French, the search has to be in French. The enrichment of the illustrations in the database is in progress and is periodically updated. The content is available in French only.

23. Inventory of the Department  of Prints and Drawings The online illustrated inventory of the Department of Prints and Drawings is an exhaustive catalogue of the museum's 140,000 works on paper, by some 4,500 artists. It provides access to the drawings, cartoons, pastels, and miniatures listed in the original handwritten inventories of the Cabinet des Dessins of the Musée du Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay. It also includes drawings from the Edmond de Rothschild Collection, drawings from French private collections confiscated to Germany during World War II and assigned to the Office des Biens Privés, paintings on paper and miniatures on loan from the Department of Paintings, and autograph drawings from the Cabinet des Dessins. Works may be searched by inventory number, artist, school, date, subject, or technique, or in the context of the history of the collection. Information about the artists (in French) is also provided (lives, works, style).

24. La Fayette This bilingual online catalogue presents more than 1,700 works produced by United States artists that entered the national collections of France before 1940.

25. Joconde Developed by the Direction des Musées de France, Joconde incorporates 120,000 descriptions of drawings, prints, and paintings from the 7th century to the present day, from the collections of over sixty French museums. Joconde provides access to commentaries (in French) and pictures, notably of works in the collections of the Musées des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, Lille, and Rennes. Joconde has been accessible online since spring 1995, and via the French Minitel system (3614 Joconde) since 1992.

26. ARCO Data Base ARCO – Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects ARCO is a research project, funded by the European Union, aimed at developing technology for museums to create 3D Virtual Exhibitions on the Web. Virtual exhibitions are created by digitising museum artefacts, which are then transformed into Virtual Representations, which can be X3D or VRML models or scenes ARCO is developing innovative technology for creating virtual representations of museum artefacts using a stereo photogrammetry system and user friendly software-Object Modeller 3D modelling tool is being developed to refine the virtual representations-Interactive Model Refinement and Rendering, Virtual representations are managed and organised into virtual exhibitions using an XML driven Object Relational Database and Content Management System. ARCO also defines a Metadata Schema that describes the ARCO data model, and multimedia content used in virtual exhibitions, from digitisation to visualisation.

27. ARCO Data Base X3D is the ISO standard XML-based file format for representing 3D computer graphics, the successor to the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). X3D features extensions to VRML the ability to encode the scene using an XML syntax as well as the Open Inventor-like syntax of VRML97, and enhanced application programmer interfaces (APIs). VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language, pronounced vermal or by its initials, originally (before 1995) known as the Virtual Reality Markup Language) is a standard file format for representing 3-dimensional (3D) interactive vector graphics, designed particularly with the World Wide Web in mind. XML The Extensible Markup Language is a general-purpose specification for creating custom markup languages.] It is classified as an extensible language because it allows its users to define their own elements. Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of structured data across different information systems, particularly via the Internet, and it is used both to encode documents and to serialize data.

28. ARCO

29. EPOCH EPOCH – European Network of Excellence in Open Cultural Heritage EPOCH is a network of about a hundred European cultural institutions joining their efforts to improve the quality and effectiveness of the use of Information and Communication Technology for Cultural Heritage. Participants include university departments, research centres, heritage institutions, such as museums or national heritage agencies, and commercial enterprises, together endeavouring to overcome the fragmentation of current research in this field. The overall objective of the network is to provide a clear organisational and disciplinary framework for increasing the effectiveness of work at the interface between technology and the cultural heritage of human experience represented in monuments, sites and museums.

30. EPOCH - TOOLS MeshLab MeshLab is an open source, portable, and extensible system for the processing and editing of unstructured 3D triangular meshes. The system is aimed to help the processing of the typical not-so-small unstructured models arising in 3D scanning, providing a set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering and converting this kind of meshes. The system is heavily based on the VCG library developed at the Visual Computing Lab of ISTI - CNR, for all the core mesh processing tasks and it is available for Windows, Linux (src) and MacOSX

31. EPOCH - TOOLS ARC 3D WebService ARC 3D is a group of tools, allowing users to upload digital images to ARC 3D servers where a 3D reconstruction is performed of the scene and report the output back to the user. ARC 3D also provides a tool for producing and visualising the 3D scene using the data computed on the servers. The first simple application is the upload tool. All that is required is that a sequence of images is uploaded to the server. The order of the images can be set by the user, and the images can be subsampled before uploading for a faster service. This is where the service really does its work. ARC computes the reconstruction also over a distributed network of PCs. Depending on the size, number and quality of the images that have been uploaded, a typical job may take from 15 minutes to 2 or 3 hours. Once the reconstruction has been successful, the system notifies the user by email. They can then use this data to produce a 3D model with the model viewer tool.

32. EPOCH - TOOLS The EPOCH ViewerThe Epoch Viewer is a tool for interactive display and exploration of 3D scenes containing digital 3D artifacts. It is not only a viewer for static, pre-defined scenes, but it also allows to compose, edit, and save 3D scenes. It supports 3D object formats that are specifically developed for CH. It has an integrated scripting language that allows to attach scripted behaviour to each object, which can even be used to realize 3D user interfaces. The CityEngineCityEngine is a system using a procedural approach based on L-systems to model cities. From various image maps given as input, such as land-water boundaries and population density, our system generates a system of highways and streets, divides the land into lots, and creates the appropriate geometry for the buildings on the respective allotments.The CityEngine, a 3D modeling software for urban environments, will be commercially available in May 2008.

33. EPOCH - TOOLS AMA - Archive Mapper for ArchaeologyAMA is a tool created for mapping existing archaeological datasets, including excavation databases, museum collections and free text data, to a CIDOC-CRM compliant format. The AMA web tool allows users to import XML data models of their existing archaeological archives and to map them to the CIDOC-CRM ontology schema, creating direct relations with the CIDOC classes. The tool also allows the definition of simple and complex relations among the already mapped elements to enrich their semantic meaning.

34. Virtual reality in Archaeology http://arheologie.ulbsibiu.ro/virtual.htm The purpose of this interdisciplinary project is to help the archaeologist to control, present and use the results of their work with the new information and communication technologies (ICT). A particular ICT of most relevance to this work is Virtual Reality (VR). A virtual reality world is an virtual environment (VE) simulated on the computer through which a person can feel almost as a part of the real world (Allen et alii 2000, p. 1575). It is used in archaeology because it can offer: Three-dimensional models that aid interpretation of the architecture. Visualise information of a high complexity. It can combine the visual images with the sound in a real time Access through the Internet using virtual reality can be more easily understood by the large public without losing the quality and the original impact. This is the technology that can “bring to life” the past in a revolutionary way, this should take place at the end of each archaeological study.

35. Virtual reality in Archaeology Structure P8 from Parta The reconstruction of wooden and clay floors, Parta The reconstruction of a sustaining wooden structure , Parta Neolithic sanctuaries from Romania Neolithic oven Parta proposal 1 with actual river position Parta - 360-degree virtual reality (VR) scenes 1 and 360-degree virtual reality (VR) scenes 2 A 3D reconstruction of the Romanic church from Cisnadioara and its fortification Proposal of the virtual reconstruction of the Romanic rotunda from Orastie (the first part of the 12 th century).

36. Imaginary exhibitions A Unique Way of Experiencing Art in 3D - Louvre Museum The imaginary exhibitions are a virtual 3D space which provides an exciting opportunity of discovering works of art from the Louvre and other museums, exploring monuments, visiting places of the past... Louis Lacaze: Reconstruction of the room dedicated to his collection Discover a 3D modelization of the La Caze room – now the Bronzes room, Sully wing, first floor, room 32 – as it was in 1913, when it housed 177 paintings by masters such as Rembrandt, Chardin or Watteau, from the prestigious collection bequeathed by La Caze to the Louvre. 3D imaginary exhibition: Jean-Honoré Fragonard This imaginary exhibition is a tribute to Fragonard, one of the greatest French painters of the 18th century, and also one of the first curators of the Musée du Louvre.

37. Imaginary exhibitions The south church at Bawit in 3D This virtual visit to the Bawit monastery takes us back in time to ancient Coptic Egypt in the first millennium of the Christian era. This imaginary exhibition presents the elements that were found during the site excavations and features a reconstruction of the church as archaeologists imagine it was in the 7th century AD. The Virtools plug-in is required

38. Imaginary exhibitionsLouis Lacaze: Reconstruction of the room dedicated to his collection

39. Imaginary exhibitions Jean-Honoré Fragonard 3D imaginary exhibition: Jean-Honoré Fragonard

40. Imaginary exhibitions The south church at Bawit The south church at Bawit in 3D

41. 3D Life Player Version: 4.0.0.96 Browser:Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape Operating System:Microsoft Windows (98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP or Vista) Download

42. The relational model

43. The relational model

44. The relational model

45. The components of the relational model

46. Management systems of the relational databases

47. Management systems of the relational databases

48. Planning databases

49. Practice

50. Configuration of databases

51. Configuration of databases

52. Objectives

53. Physical implementation of data (a)

54. Physical implementation of data (a)

55.  Physical implementation of data (b)

56. Physical implementation of data (b)