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Creating a Virtual Tour Using Social Media Sites

Undergraduate Project Dissertation

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of Napier University for the degree of Bachelor of Science with Honours in Interactive Media Design

Supervisor: Dr Michael Smyth

Second Marker:

Mr Tom McEwan

Bogna Buzialkowska 07010365

BSc (Hons) Interactive Media Design

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AUTHORSHIP DECLARATION I, Bogna Buzialkowska, confirm that this dissertation and the work presented in it are my own achievement.

1. Where I have consulted the published work of others this is always clearly attributed.

2. Where I have quoted from the work of others the source is always given.

With the exception of such quotations this dissertation is entirely my own work

3. I have acknowledged all main sources of help.

4. If my research follows on from previous work or is part of a larger collaborative research project I have made clear exactly what was done by others and what I have contributed myself.

5. I have read and understand the penalties associated with plagiarism.

Signed Name: Bogna Buzialkowska Matric No.: 07010365

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Authorship Declaration……………………………………………………...………2 Table of Contents…………………………………………………………..…….….3 Table of Figures……………………………………………………………………..4 Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………..….…..5 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………….........6 2. Literature Review………………………………………………………………....7 2.1 Virtual Reality…………………………………………………………….....7

2.1.1 A Brief History of Virtual Reality……………………...……….....7 2.1.2 What is Virtual Reality?...................................................................8

2.2 Virtual Museum……………………………………………………..….…..10 2.2.1 What is a Virtual Museum?............................................................10 2.2.2 Related Works……………………………………………...…….12 2.2.3 Case Study- Virtual Museums…………………………….…..….16

2.3 Technology…………………………………………………………..….….26 3. Interview with Tessa Quinn………………………………………………….......27 4. Interview with John-Paul Sumner……………………………………….…..…..28 5. Social Media……………………………………………………………...…….. 30 5.1 Social Media in a Museum…………………………………………...…….34 6. Design…………………………………………………………………………....37 7. Implementation……………………………..………………………...………….41 8. Evaluation……………………………………..…………………………………44 9. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….47

9.1 Critical Analysis……………………………………………………………47 9.2 Future Work………………………………………………………....……..48 9.3 Personal Reflection…………………………………………………………49 9.4 Final Conclusion…………………………………………………………....50

10. References………………………………………………………………………51 11. Appendices A. Week 12 Report Assessment Form………………………...……..…..…….53 B. Blog…………………………………………………………..…….……….55

C. Sketches……………………………………………………………………..72 D. Storyboards…………………………………………………………………74 E. Email from Dr John- Paul Sumner………………………………………….77

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Table of Figures:

1. Menu (on the left)………………………………………………………......…16 2. Menu (on the right)……………………………………………………………16 3. Wall of text in The Virtual Museum of Manchester Computing……………...16 4. Enhance picture of the Sphinx (on the left)……………………………...……17 5. View of the exhibition in the virtual tour of Louvre (On the right)…………………………………………………………………..17 6. Small virtual tour on http://www.louvre.fr…………………………………….18 7. Recreation of The Ambassador’s Staircase (On the left) ………………...…..18 8. Enhance picture of one of the artworks (on the right)………………………....18 9. Workshop of Dominique Vivant………………………………………………19 10. Anne Franks room……………………………………………………………..20 11. Anne Frank Timeline……………………………………………….………….20 12. Anne Frank Tree……………………………………………..………….……..20 13. View of The Museum of Childhood……………………………….…………..21 14. View of The National Museum of Marine Corps with menu with different types of media (on the left)……………….………...22 15. View of The National Museum of Marine Corps with menu with map (on the right)……………………………………….……22 16. One of the mini-games………………………………………………………...23 17. Museum lobby with menu……………………………………….……….……23 18. Art Project website with custom gallery………………………………………24 19. Facebook wall with Art Project link to the custom gallery…...……………….24

20. Facebook wall……...………………………………………………………......31 21. Tweets…………………………………………………………………………..32 22. Choice of videos on YouTube……………………………...…………………..33 23. V&A Facebook wall……………………………………………………………35

24. Kelvingrove’s tweets…………………………………………...………………36 25. Storyboards…………………………………………………………...………...38 26. Menu Design…………………………………………...………………………39 27. Sketch of West Court Plan……………………………………………………...39 28. Menu planning…………………………………………………………………40 29. Colour Corrector in Final Cut Pro………………………………………………41 30. Exporting options in Final Cut Pro……………………………………………..42 31. One of the videos on YouTube…………………………………………………43 32. Video statistics on YouTube……………………………………………………44 33. Comments under one of the videos……………………………………………..45

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to give many thanks to Dr Michael Smyth who was supervisor of this project for his guidance and support; to Mr Tom McEwan for his advices and being part of the marking process. Furthermore many thanks to the interviewee Mrs Tessa Quinn. Special thanks to Dr John- Paul Sumner who is the learning and access curator at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum for his kindness and co-operation. At last, I owe particular thanks to my parents and friends for their support. I dedicate this work to my boyfriend Steven, without his support and grammar check this work could not exist.

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1. INTRODUCTION Since the Internet became available museums have tried to assert a presence online. At first museum websites contained basic information about opening times, exhibitions, etc. Now museums show images and description of the objects, use user-generated content, provide educational materials, mini-games, run on-line shops and connect with visitors in numerous innovative ways. Many museums created a virtual museum, where people can view the collection. In most cases the virtual museum is a compilation of images of artefacts with their descriptions. Some museums went further and created panoramic representations of the museum, or even 3D representations of the buildings and exhibits. Why do museums do it? To reach out to people who do not normally attend the museum? To enhance the experience of visitors? There are also questions about audience expectation. Do virtual museums work? Do they provide a similar experience to the traditional museum? Perhaps virtual museums should not try to replicate the museum experience, but to create a new one. The paper presents a literature review, research on existing virtual museums, interviews with museum professionals, case studies on social media, design and implementation of the project. The aim of the study is to gain more knowledge about virtual realities, virtual museums and the purposes of creating virtual museums. It is intended to look at social media sites and harness them to create a virtual tour of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

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2. LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1. Virtual Reality 2.1.1. A Brief History of Virtual Reality The term “virtual reality” has been in use for many years. NASA created the first VR systems in mid-1980s, but the beginning of VR can be traced farther. The first entry of the Sherman and Craig timeline places the earliest form of VR at 1916, when Albert B. Pratt got a U.S. Patent for a head-based periscope display. In 1956, the cinematographer Morton Heilig developed Sensorama. The system let you to choose pre-recorded rides (motorcycles, bicycles, helicopter) and view 3D photographic slides. It also had stereo sound, vibrations, wind and even smell generators. In 1965, Ivan Sutherland published a paper explaining the idea of the ultimate display in which the “user can interact with objects in some world that does not need to follow the law of physical reality” (Sherman and Craig, 2003). In 1968 Sutherland, known as the father of Virtual Reality systems, built a head-mounted display. The system showed the user a computer-produced 3D picture. “The system tracked the user’s head movement to update the images accordingly, giving an illusion of being in a virtual world.” They also state that images were far from realistic, though the stereoscopic view gave an impression of looking at solid 3D objects. Sutherland also created the “Sketchpad”, considered to be the foundation of CAD (computer-aided drafting) software. An important person in the development of virtual reality systems is computer artist Myron Kruger. His work, “Videoplace”, exhibited at SIGGRAPH Art Show in 1985, allowed for interaction by responding to gestures of the audience by interpreting and anticipating actions. Krueger called the output of the system “artificial reality”. In the 1980s VR products were explored commercially. Companies like VPL, Polhemus, Ascension, Virtual Technologies and Immersion focused on developing VR hardware and software (Gutiérrez, Vexo and Thalmann, 2008). In the 90s, movies like Lawnmower Man, Strange Days, and Johnny Mnemonic brought the idea of Virtual Reality to ordinary people. To a great degree, video games have “opened up virtual worlds, artificial intelligence and computer-generated characters for popular play and consumption” (Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant, Kelly, 2009).

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2.1.2. What is Virtual Reality? Along with Virtual Reality come other “virtual experiences” like virtual communities, virtual tours, virtual universities, virtual workplaces, virtual museum, and many more. To understand them we should define Virtual Reality. It is a relatively new medium and its definition varies between researches. Gutiérrez, Vexo and Thalmann (2008) tell that Virtual Reality is “ about creating “acceptable” reproductions of real objects or environments for training, entertainment or design purposes”. Furthermore they state the main goal of Virtual Reality is “to create in the user the illusion of being in an environment that can be perceived as a believable place with enough interactivity to perform specific tasks in efficient and comfortable way.” They also state that there are two main aspects of Virtual Reality: immersion and presence. This is a very adequate interpretation of Virtual Reality from a practical perspective. Others scholars look to define VR as precisely as possible. The definition they provide is from point of view of researchers and academics in the field of Virtual Reality. Sherman and Craig (2003) start by defining the terms “virtual” and “reality” using Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (1989). Virtual as “being in essence or effect, but not in fact”. Reality as “the state of quality of being real. Something that exist independently of ideas concerning it. Something that constitutes a real or actual thing as distinguished from something that is merely apparent.” Next, Sherman and Craig (2003) identify four keys elements of the Virtual Reality Experience. These are Virtual World, Immersion, Sensory Feedback and Interactivity. The Virtual World is “the content of a given medium.” It can be a fantasy place existing in the head of a writer. To be experienced it has to be presented through a medium, including physical immersion and interactions, but can exist a separate entity. Immersion, or more precisely physical immersion, is a required part of Virtual Reality. It is defined as “bodily entering into a medium; synthetic stimulus of the body’s senses via the use of technology; this does not imply all senses or that the entire body is immersed/ engulfed.” Another main element of Virtual Reality is Sensory Feedback. Users of VR systems have the advantage of influencing them by using their bodies. In the majority of cases the system has to follow user movements through the use of tracking devices on her head (for example head-mounted displays) and hands. More sophisticated systems can track more body parts. The last element of Virtual Reality presented by Sherman and Craig (2003) is Interactivity. This element is very important because it adds to the system's feeling of being realistic. Interactivity is closely connected with Collaborative Environment, which they define as “multiple users interacting within a virtual world that enables interaction among participants; not necessarily manifested in Virtual Reality; a collaborative Virtual Reality environment can be referred to as multipresence and

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multiparticipant.” Collaborative environments are immensely significant. They allow for team play, humans opponents and allow for socialising and the creation of communities. In collaborative environments it is vital to know where other participants are located, through the use of virtual representations of the users called “avatars”. After defining four key features of Virtual Realities Sherman and Craig (2003) comes to this definition: VR “is a medium composed of interactive computer simulations that sense the participant position and actions and replace or augment the feedback to one or more senses, giving the feeling of being mentally immersed or present in the simulation (a virtual world).”

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2.2. Virtual Museums

2.2.1. What is a Virtual Museum? The idea of the Virtual Museum was explored before the Internet. In 1947 the principles of the Malraux Imaginary Museum as a concept existed. A museum without walls, spatial boundaries or location to which you can have access no matter where on the plant you are. The Malraux hypothesis states “each work of art contains a potential of dialogue. (…) This dialogue occurs between the work and its observer, and also between the works themselves” (Geoffrey T. Harris (Ed.), 2000). The concept of Le musée imaginaire come true not long after the death of Malraux thanks to the development of technology and the Internet. Nowadays people around the world have access to virtual museums. At the moment there is no standard definition of the term “virtual museum”. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, virtual museum is “a collection of digitally recorded images, sound files, text documents, and other data of historical, scientific, or cultural interest that are accessed through electronic media”(Encyclopaedia Britannica, online). Schweibenz defines virtual museum as “a logically related collection of digital objects composed in a variety of media which, because of its capacity to provide connectedness and various point of access, lends itself to transcending traditional methods of communicating and interacting with visitors; it has no real place or space, its objects and the related information can be disseminated around the world” (Schweibenz, 1998). Another definition states that a Virtual Museum “can be a digital collection that is presented over the Web, or to an intranet, either via PC, an informative kiosk, a PDA, or even to a CD- ROM as an extension of a physical museum, or that it can be completely imaginary. Furthermore, the abstract term virtual museum can take various forms depending on the application scenario and end-user. It can be a 3D reconstruction of the physical place museum. Alternatively. It can be a completely imaginary environment, in the form of various rooms, in which the cultural artefacts are placed” (Styliani and all, 2009). According to Shiode and Kanoshima, as of 24 March 1998 major search engines (Yahoo, Alta Vista and Lycos) found about 1400 sites which matched queries “virtual” and “museum”. On 11 November there were 8,510,000 matches on Google, 16,000,000 on Bing, 90,400,000 on Yahoo (this same amount on Alta Vista, which belongs to Yahoo), 18,500,000 on Lycos. At the present time most museum have their representation on the Internet. From a little museum in Poland (Zmek Ksiazat Pomorskich) to the Louvre in France and the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York, museums are present on the Internet. They provide information, like opening times and current exhibits; show content of the available collections and provide learning materials. Moreover some of them provide educational entertainment like the Science Museum in London, where you can grow your own creature and learn about genes, or the National Museum of Scotland, where you can go on an adventure with the Lewis Chess Men.

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According to Silverston (1994) “museums are in many respects like other contemporary media. They entertain and inform; they tell stories and construct arguments; they aim to please and to educate; they define, consciously or unconsciously; effectively or ineffectively, an agenda; they translate the otherwise unfamiliar and inaccessible into the familiar and accessible.” Thanks to technology and the Internet, museums have now a great opportunity to be truly “without the walls”.

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2.2.2. Related Works Virtual Museum Net of Magna Graecia In the Virtual Museum Net of Magna Graecia project, the key idea was to collect and organize in digital format material from several museums and archaeological sites in Calabria (a region in Italy). Material that is not accessible to visitors would be available via the Internet to specialists, researchers and a wide range of users. Objects and historical information would have been available through pictures, videos and 3D representations of items and buildings. The main purpose of the project was to create a virtual museum that promotes Calabrian heritage. The Secondary purpose was to create a net of museums, universities, schools and other institutions. The net would allow for communications through news, emails, cooperative jobs, etc. The system would contain three-dimensional reconstructions of archaeological sites, which would be supported by a Quick Time Virtual Reality System. The aim of the system was to create a visit where the user will feel immersed in the environment. A visit would also contain didactic and informative content. For the purpose of the project 3D reconstructions of buildings were created (a theatre, a house, a temple and an agora). Further work was done to create an interactive Virtual Theatre. (Bertacchini et al, 2006) The project and its website are now closed. Cultural Heritage 2.0 The goal of the Cultural Heritage 2.0 project is to create an on-line community. Users (researchers, scientist and people interested in use of new technology in cultural heritage) will be able to navigate and manipulate a 3D virtual environment. They will also be able to customize their accounts and create avatars. They will be able to interact with each other, share opinions and images, audios, text and blogs. The bases of Cultural Heritage 2.0 are two different projects: mentioned before Virtual Museum Net of Magna Graecia and The Net Connect Project (Connecting Europe Culture through the Net). The aim of Net project is to make a connection between three different archaeological sites: Loring in Italy, Glauberg in Germany and Biskupin in Poland through the Geographical Information System, Virtual Reality and Mobile Technology (Bertacchini & Feraco, 2008). The Co-Visiting System for the Mackintosh Interpretation Centre in The Lighthouse The Co-Visiting system for the Mackintosh Interpretation Centre was build to allow users physically separated from each other to visit together. This system allows three people to visit the exhibition together, one person on the site and 2 two present digitally. The person in the Interpretation Centre is equipped with wireless headphones, a microphone and a handheld PDA, which includes a location system. The Virtual

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Reality visitor uses a 3D first person recreation of the centre. The web visitor uses a standard web browser with Java applets. This study showed that that the using of common information space, when compared to solo web page visit “adds depth to a digital visitor’s experience. Interaction takes place across the digital and physical media, creating a social engaging experience beyond that available to digital visitor. A sense of co-presence is achieved, even though the visitors are distant from each other” (Brow et al.). The 3D Vase Museum The 3D Vase museum explores a new way of exploring library content. Based on the Perseus digital library, the virtual museum shows it’s collection of vases. The user can navigate through a room where the vases are presented. He can look for a specific collection and can take a closer look at selected vases. If the user navigates towards item of interest a description of the item appears. If user navigates further away the description will become less and less visible until it completely disappears. There is also the opportunity of choosing how vases are arranged (for example by colour, date, shape, dimension, etc.) The system was created so that the user could “walk” around the room. In addition there is an animated tour. This approach allows users to concentrate on both the focus (vase) and the context (whole collection). Cultural Centre of The Foundation of the Hellenic World The Foundation of the Hellenic World is non-profit organization based in Greece. The aim of the institution is to conserve Hellenic culture through creative use of technology. The foundation in its centre has some of the best virtual reality equipment (in 2001) to which belong Immersadesk™ and ReaCTor™. The systems are projection-based and allow for a shared experience (Immersadesk™ up to 5 people, ReaCTor™ up to 10). In the ReaCTor™ system users can move physically in a cubic area of 9m2 and navigate in the virtual environment. In both systems users are still aware of the real surrounding and their bodies. For the system a number of cultural and educational applications were created. In the program “A Journey through Ancient Miletus” users can discover how ancient city looked two thousand years ago. They can “walk” through the temple of Apollo Delphinius, the Council House, the Hellenistic Gymnasium and many more. The application is suitable for every user and makes it possible to explore the city, it’s people and ancient life. Another application is the “Temple of Zeus at Olympia”, where users have chance to see the temple and the famous statue of Zeus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, which does not exist anymore. As the users get closer to the temple, metopes

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portraying scenes from Greek mythology come into view. These two projects were created to show the ancient world in the most realistic way possible. Another two applications, “The Magical World of Byzantine Costume” and “Olympic Pottery Puzzle” were created with emphasis on interactivity and education. In “The Magical World of Byzantine Costume”, users, mostly children, have a task to find missing parts of costumes and return them to its owner. Children interact with the game by asking questions and talking part in learning process. In the “Olympic Puzzle Pottery” users have to put back together a destroyed ancient vase, placing the broken pieces in to a coloured skeleton. When successful, the figure represented on the vase comes to life and an animation of one of the ancient Olympic contests is played. There are a number of other applications created by The Foundation of the Hellenic world. The foundation also works on augmenting existing applications. The ARCO system The ARCO (Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects) project was founded to create a range of technologies to “help museums to create, manipulate, manage and present digitized cultural objects in virtual exhibitions both inside and outside museums” (Wojciechowski, et al., 2004). The aim of the ARCO system is to make it possible for museums to build and manage Virtual and Augmented Reality exhibitions. Due to dual design of the user interface, the system can be present in web browsers and in a special Augmented Reality application. Contents for visualization of exhibition spaces are dynamically generated, based on template instance. There different templates for the Web-based interface and for Augmented Reality. In a Web browser, artefacts can be visualised in two ways. In the first users can browse a hierarchy of pieces, represented like a tree, on the left. The media associated with the chosen object are displayed in the main area of the screen. The second way is a 3D gallery, in which artefacts are presented. Users walk through the gallery and get more detailed information using interaction elements built into displays. In this system a designer or museum worker can re-arrange the exhibition by using the Presentation Manager and moving the objects within the virtual environment. The CORONA project The CORONA project aims to “create interactive experience based on audio augmented reality that lets the visitor interact with a virtual spatial audio space” (Heller et al., 2009). The CORONA project was developed for the Coronation Hall in the German city of Aachen.

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The audio space is rendered on a mobile device (Apple iPhone with additional hardware) with which visitors are equipped. Visitors also carry headphones with built in compass sensor to determine the positions of their heads. The user moves around The Coronation Hall and explores the virtual audio spaces. The user navigates “by ear”, moving in the direction of interesting sounds. Developers used a medieval coronation feast as scenery for the audio space. With this technique the process is given the sense of coming alive. For example, listening to a conversation of servants reveals social class conflicts, immersing the user far more than hearing about class conflict from a drier, historical perspective. Visitors do not take part in conversation, but can take part in activities that can involve following characters. The developers were also concentrating on the social factor of visiting a museum. People often come to museums in groups, and discussing exhibitions as they experience it. To reduce the isolation, lightweight open headphones were used to allow for conversation between visitors.

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2.2.3. Case Study- Virtual Museums The Virtual Museum of Manchester Computing http://www.computer50.org/kgill/index.html The Virtual Museum of Manchester Computing is one of the first museums present on the Internet. It was created as a third year project by Kulwinder S. Gill between 1995 and 1996. This Virtual Museum is built like a collection of links with the archaic user interface. Navigation menu is positioned on the welcome page, below introduction and page description. Each of the links direct to heavy walls of text, which do not encourage visitors (see fig. 3).

Figure 1. Menu Figure 2. Menu

Figure 3. Wall of text in The Virtual Museum of Manchester Computing What is interesting is that the museum does not exist in reality. Above the menu you

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can see a floor plan of an entire, solely virtual museum. Louvre Museum http://www.louvre.fr The Grand Louvre is the best know and the most visited museum in the world. On it's page it is possible to engage with the museum in a few different ways. The virtual tour of the medieval Louvre allows visiting the south-west corner of the Sully wing containing the remains of the moat and keep of the original fortress (see fig. 5). The visit is built from 360° panoramas and requires Quick Time plug-in. Navigation is by mouse. It is possible to look left and right by holding the right button. Chosen artefacts can be zoomed in on, at which point a small description appears (see fig. 3). If more information is required there is an option to open them in a pop up window. The lower ground and ground floor are also available which contain Egyptian Antiques. While the application allows the visitor to view the museum it does not give a chance to really explore. When you look around it is confusing to find direction to rooms, which have not been visited, even with little maps. The lack of sound makes this tour empty and very dry.

Figure 4. Enhance picture of the Sphinx (on the left) Figure 5. View of the exhibition in the virtual tour of Louvre (on the right) Other exhibitions, like Islamic Art or Sculptures, are also available in panoramic view, but these tours appear in a smaller window. It is possible only to navigate right and left. Zoomed images are pixelated and hard to see. There is no description of artefacts.

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Figure 6. Small virtual tour on http://www.louvre.fr The user can visit some reconstructed or imaginary rooms in 3D. The Virtools plug in is required, but even with it tours do not seem to work properly. There is no problem with visiting The Ambassador’s Staircase, recreated on the base of Charles Le Brun (see fig. 7). Navigation is similar to 360° panoramas. There is a difference in presenting details. When an artefact is chosen its picture covers the main area and on right side appears a description with additional pictures (see fig. 8). When an attempt was made to visit three other 3D tours the web browser crashed. There is also no real difference between 3D recreation of the staircase and the panoramas from the larger tours. It is not possible to explore it more.

Figure 7. Recreation of The Ambassador’s Staircase (on the left) Figure 8. Enhance picture of one of the artworks (on the right) The Louvre does not forget about children. On the Home page an animated character invites the visitor to his workshop. Dominique Vivant Denon’s (first director of the museum) workshop hides stories (see fig. 9). You can choose between stories about artefacts from the Louvre collection or Vivant Denon’s adventures. Stories are told in an interesting manner, using audio recording and simple animation. It is an engaging way to discover some of the exciting facts connected with art history.

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Figure 9. Workshop of Dominique Vivant. The Anne Frank Museum http://www.annefrank.org/ The Secret Annex Online was created because the Anne Frank museum has a problem with catering to more than a million people, which visit building every year. It was also prepared for people who cannot physically visit the museum. “It is meant for a diverse audience and can replace or enhance a visit to the real house” (The virtual museum: making of from Anne Frank Youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/AnneFrank). Even if a virtual tour cannot substitute a visit to Ann Frank’s house, it adds to it. People from around the world can see how the house looked at the time when Anne and her family were in hiding for more then two years. Areas that are closed to the public within the museum are available through the virtual tour. When you first approach any room in the virtual tour the space is empty. If the user stands in the middle furniture appears. Navigation is simple. The user can move around by holding the right mouse button and moving the mouse. Navigating to other rooms is accomplished by selecting them from a 3D floor plan or clicking on doors. Each room has a description and a few stories the user can listen to. It is also possible to select a specific object for additional information and stories. Each story is supported by movies and picture slides. There are biographies of the residents of the hideout (see. Fig. 10) Background sounds like birds singing, church bells or aeroplane noise adds reality to the experience. The 3D environment was created in Flash. Pictures taken in the house were converted into panoramas and mapped on a sphere. After placing the sphere in the 3D representation of the room pictures were applied on the walls. The visit does not require any plug-ins.

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Moving around the Anne’s house is great virtual experience with atmospheric sound and additional media. There is plenty of information but the user is not overloaded due to the ability to choose what you would like to see or hear.

Figure 10. Anne Franks room The Anne Frank museum website contains other interactive elements like the Anne Frank Timeline and the Anne Frank Tree. The Ann Frank Timeline (see fig. 11) follows the life of Anne, her family and friends from the First World War (1914) until the fall of the Anne Frank tree (2010). Anne Frank Tree is an interactive monument where people from around the world can leave their signatures (see fig. 12).

Figure 11. Anne Frank Timeline

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Figure 12. Anne Frank Tree The Museum of Childhood http://www.revolvingpicture.com/virtual-tours/moc/ The Museum of Childhood (part of V&A museum) is a 360° virtual tour. It looks very attractive, with beautiful panoramic pictures. Navigation is controlled by mouse and uses hotspots, which take the visitor to the different areas of the museum. In the right hand corner there is a small menu, which helps to move around, and zoom in and out on, many objects. It is not possible to zoom in closely enough to most items to get a good look. There are thumbs, which take users to the specific objects. Another navigation aid is a small map which shows where you are, represented by a green pin. The other areas are marked by red pins. It would have been beneficial to have another colour code for areas, which have not been visited, but this has not been implemented (see fig.13). Other hotspots, red and purple, are dedicated to specific objects, however these hotspots are few and far between. With so few hotspots to display objects and insufficient zoom capability there is not really much to look at except panoramic pictures. There are no interactive mini games, videos or sound effect.

Figure 13. View of The Museum of Childhood

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The National Museum of Marine Corps http://www.virtualusmcmuseum.com/LG_1.asp The National Museum of Marine Corps is created from 360° panoramic pictures. Navigation is similar to other tours of this type, controlled by mouse. There is a navigation panel in the bottom of the main window. In the section below the panorama is a map, which allows for changing rooms (see fig. 15). In each room there is an option to hear a spoken version, or to read for yourself, a general history of rooms and their contents within the museum. Also in each room there is various additional media (see fig 14). In the Making Marines room it is possible to zoom in on an HD picture of the exhibition. It allows for a better look at objects in the cabinet. In the Leatherneck Gallery it is possible to see portraits of the soldiers from various war operations. There is a 3D model of the plane Pioneer UAV which can be rotated and viewed from any angle. There are plenty of historical videos and recordings to choose from. With so much media, navigation can be confusing. Switching between them can break the immersion of the visit.

Figure 14. View of The National Museum of Marine Corps with menu with different types of media (on the left) Figure 15. View of The National Museum of Marine Corps with menu with map (on the right) Norfolk Virtual Museum http://www.norfolkvirtualmuseum.co.uk/inside.html Norfolk Virtual Museum stands out from other virtual museums. Rather than panoramic pictures of interiors and artefacts, this virtual museum is built from mini games (see fig. 16). The user starts his journey from the museum lobby (see fig. 17). He then moves around using the museum guide or navigation menu, which take him from room to room. In each area a different game is available. In Norfolk’s Building there the visitor can learn about Norfolk's famous buildings and make a list of which, to use the museum's terminology, love and hate. In the Restaurant it is possible to pick up dishes from the menu and learn about them. The user can flip postcards, go back in

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time, operate long-range binoculars and many other activities. The website is fun and educational. The only thing, which rankles, is the very bright green background to the pictures and videos.

Figure 16. One of the mini-games Figure 17. Museum lobby with menu Google Art Project http://www.googleartproject.com/ This Art Project created by Google using Street View technology lets the visitors take a virtual tour around 17 of the world's most famous museums, including MoMA-The Museum of Modern Art (New York City), Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), Palace of Versailles and the State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg). Navigation is similar to Street View on Google Maps. The user moves around using mouse by pressing and holding left button. To go to the area of choice the user has to double press left mouse button. It is also possible to navigate using arrow icons that are placed on the screen. A piece of new technology used here is the Artwork Viewer. In the viewer it is possible to look at featured artworks at high resolution, with the option to zoom into paintings. In the expandable panel it is possible to read about the artwork or watch related videos. Art Project has a function which allows the user to create custom collections, add descriptions and share these on Facebook, Twitter and via email.

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Figure 18. Art Project website with custom gallery.

Figure 19. Facebook wall with Art Project link to the custom gallery. The examples above show different types of virtual museum which can currently be found on the Internet. Most of them are using 360° panoramic pictures with additional information available in separate windows, accessed by pressing hotspots. Some museums use flash based games in order to be more interactive and engaging. In the shown examples, lack of ambient sound (except Anne Frank Museum) can make the experience seem boring and artificial. Representing a museum by only using panoramic pictures is not much different from the experience of looking through a book

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with beautiful pictures. None of these museums offer much, if anything, by way of social interaction. They do not allow for leaving comments or interacting with other online visitors.

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2.3. Technology Technology is an important factor in creating a virtual museum. The newest tools are not always the best because the output created with them has to be accessible to a wide range of audience, which do not necessarily have the newest equipment. At the moment, most of the virtual tours available on museums websites are created in Adobe Flash using 360° panoramic pictures, for example the virtual exhibition of the Louvre and the Anne Franks Secret Annex. Virtual tours, which are created in 3D and programmed using VRML or X3D need additional plug-ins like 3DVIA Virtools (http://www.3ds.com), Cult3D (http://www.cult3d.com) or Cortona 3DViver (http://www.cortona3d.com). The Louvre’s The Ambassador’s Staircase requires the Virtool plug-in. After installing the software, which is available for different platforms, the user can visit the exhibition. Exhibition “Ekspozycja 3D w spichlerzu” from Muzeum Narodowe Rolnictwa i Przemysłu Rolno-Spożywczego w Szreniawie k. Poznania (http://szreniawa.wirtualne-muzea.pl/xvrml/WEB,344,,,) was built using the ARCO system, which is not available for Mackintosh users as Cortona 3DViver is not compatible with the system. The 3D tour of the Eiffel Tower has the same issue, requiring the Cult3D plug-in.

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3. INTERVIEW WITH TESSA QUINN Tessa Quinn has been head of the New Media department at the National Galleries of Scotland since 2004. Her responsibilities include a strategy for digital media and services, maintaining contact with visitors through the galleries' own site nationalgalleries.org and social networking sites like Facebook, Flicker and soon Twitter. Her interest in digital and online developments began when she worked as Manager of the Stills Posters & Designs collection at the British Film Institute. “The whole original concept of any digital work at National Galleries of Scotland is about providing better access or different types of access to the collection. That is the whole reason we publish any of our artworks online or any information”, she stated. All of the galleries buildings are located in Edinburgh. Having an online presence allows interaction with a wider audience. She also adds that their activity is caused by visitors demand, “we also try to provide people the information they want the way they want. It is the easiest way that people can obtain the information”. Five years ago the Galleries decided against 3D representation because they thought available technology would not support it. “Museums which had done it were not seeing any benefits”. She also adds that that they do not want to recreate a museum exhibition experience. They want to supplement it or provide other experiences digitally. “For example we are currently working with the Tate on creating a game where people can create their own exhibitions, and that is going to be rendered in 3D”. Tessa also strongly agree with the fact that museums are social spaces and connecting trough the Internet can bring something more to this experience. “The “Portrait Gallery” is a project we are working at the moment and we are trying to find the ways to link physical experience with online experience”. In this project people will be able to share their experiences in galleries with others Internet users. Tessa asserts other problems linked with representation of art works on the Internet, such as accessibility and copyrights. In the end Tessa was asked about fears that virtual museums can replace traditional museums. “I think people used to have fears about that, I do not think they have any more. I think people moved beyond that”. She also compares digital to the other publishing media like books or posters.

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4. Interview with John- Paul Sumner John-Paul Sumner is the Learning and Access Curator at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Musuem. Each year Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum hosts one and half million visitors and has eight hundred thousand objects from around the world on display. The Museum has a web page, which is a part of the Glasgow Life web-site (Glasgow Life is an organisation, which includes museums, youth, centres, libraries, sports centres). “The museum webpage sits inside the shell of Glasgow Life. Kelvingrove webpage is a very general page, we just put information in” says John-Paul. “We are aware at the moment that the traffic is very one way. It is us telling the people and giving out information. It is not a social website”. In the future the museum would like to develop a Facebook page. “We want to create a dialogue with the people who use the museum and internal people can communicate this way”. Setting up a Facebook page for an individual is very simple. For organisations like a museum it can be quite difficult. John-Paul says that it needs to be done “for a particular reason”. There are difficulties with replying to comments. Who should do that? How often? Another major problem is that whoever is talking represents the entire company. “That is not really in the spirit of the Facebook” adds John-Paul. The museum would like to create a virtual museum. “To create a virtual museum required a lot of resources”. Items have to be removed from display, photographed, put back on the display, upload to the Internet. For a museum it is a lot of complicated work. Creating a virtual museum involves a lot of effort but provides huge opportunities. “They give access to the collections, allow as many people from as many different places to engage with the collections, look at them and understand them”. Interviews brought new light to the research and gave insight into a real museum's needs and capabilities. It is not always necessary to create a 3D copy or panoramic pictures of existing museums. Every museum is different and has different needs.

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Each case should be considered separately and be adjusted to the museum's requirements and potential. Creating a 3D or even a panoramic virtual museum is expensive, not only requiring money and time but often closing the museum for the duration of the photo shoot and removing artefacts from display. Despite this disadvantage, virtual museums can be a great way to get to the visitors who cannot physically attend a museum, and as a tool for museum education and promotion.

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5. Social Media In the past few years the Internet has become a way of life. In the United Kingdom 73% of households have broadband (Kalepsi, et al., 2010). The average user spends 22 hours and 15 minutes on the net every month, and 22.7% of it on social networking sites (www.bbc.co.uk). Mayfield defines social media as “a group of new kinds of online media, which share most or all of the following characteristics: participation, openness, conversation, community, connectedness.” “At this time, there are basically six kinds of social media: social networks, blogs, wikis, podcasts, forums, content communities and microblogging” (Mayfield, 2008). Social networks make it possible for users to build personal pages, fill a template with personal information, upload data like pictures or videos and to share content and communicate with friends. The most popular social networks are:

1. Web logs, or blogs for short. The most recent entry appears first. Blog can cover specific topic or area of interest. It is possible to add videos, pictures, links and audio.

2. Wikis. Online encyclopaedias which can be added to and modified by any

internet user. The best known wiki is Wikipedia with 3,593,417 articles and 23,564,218 pages in total. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About/).

3. Podcasts. Audio and video files, which are accessible by subscriptions. 4. Forums. Websites designed for online discussion. Usually they are created

around a particular topic or area of interest.

5. Content communities. Sites that allow people to organize and share specific types of content, for example YouTube (for sharing videos) and Flick (for sharing pictures).

6. Microblogs. Social networks with short text entries. Content is distributed

online and through Internet enabled mobile phones. The most popular is Twitter.

Facebook http://www.facebook.com The most popular social network right now is Facebook. It was founded in February 2004. There are five hundred million active users, averaging 130 friends each. Facebook was introduced o the United Kingdom in 2007 and in February 2011 it was announced that half of the British population have a Facebook account. On Facebook users can invite friends and family, chat and share pictures and videos. Each activity of friends appears in the member's homepage, called their “wall”.

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Facebook allows users to create a “fan” page. This is a page dedicated to a band, celebrity or business. Fan pages are maintained in a similar way to the individual users pages with the difference that viewers can choose to “like” the page. Users who like the page can comment on posts, watch pictures and videos, take part in discussions, rate the organisation and interact in many other ways. The admininstrators of the fan page can create a page for events, which automatically sends invitations to all their “fans”.

Figure 20. Facebook wall. Twitter http://twitter.com/ Twitter is a microblogging site. Users can share text-based posts that have come to be known as “tweets”. Videos and pictures can also be shared. Each tweet can be up to 140 characters long. Subscribers to a user are called “followers”. Most users tweet on mobile devices. Twitter apps are available on iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Windows 7 and Android. It is possible to live stream tweets on a personal website. There are five hundred thousand accounts created every day, and 140 million tweets a day.

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Figure 21. Tweets YouTube http://www.youtube.com YouTube is a platform which allows the sharing of videos. There is 24 hours of video uploaded every minute, and in total there are over 2 billion views per day. On average, each visitor to the site spends fifteen minutes there every day. YouTube uses Adobe Flash to display videos on their page. Videos can be viewed in a range of quality levels. After uploading videos to YouTube they can be embedded to any website or social networking site. Users can annotate their uploaded clips, allowing them to create sets of videos or just add information. The annotations are used by Youtube to automatically link with similar videos. Subtitles and captions can be added to a clip on the site should the uploader want it to be more accessible to a wider audience. One of the most important features on YouTube is the clip viewer's comments section. This is present in every uploaded clip unless specifically disabled. Every user who signs up to YouTube can state their opinion on the clip, which can often lead to debate and discussion. Whether or not this discussion will be of any benefit is another matter, as without constant moderation these sections can easily deteriorate into excessive and inane negativity, or “trolling”.

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Figure 22. Choice of videos on YouTube. “According to Experian Hitwise’s latest report, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are the UK’s favourite online destinations, knocking entertainment sites like the BBC iPlayer and Channel 4’s home page off the top spot” (Barnett, 2011). With their rapid and constant growth, social networks need to be harnessed by cultural organisations. Joining them is free, the user interface is simple and there is no other medium with which it is possible to reach so wide and varied an audience. Social media is not only free, but gives individuals and organisations the opportunity to converse with an audience, collect feedback and opinions and to document and add pictures and films of previous events to make them accessible to people who could not attend.

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5.1. Social Media in Museums. “Social media are a growing issue in the museum environment as they challenge existing communication models, and few museums have clear strategies for engaging communities in content creation” (Russo, et at., 2006). In the past a museum would communicate with potential visitors by simply making their information available on websites, where anyone with the Internet access and the inclination could read it. Social media has given museums the opportunity to rethink this strategy and connect with their audience. Some British museums have already begun engaging with social networking sites and do so very well. Others are only beginning to grasp their importance. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is present on Facebook with 83,838 fans, on Twitter with 46,701 followers and on YouTube with 913 subscribers and 758,356 total views of videos. They also have their own video channel at http://www.vam.ac.uk/channel/. Gail Durbin is the head of V&A online, where she is responsible for digital and media projects. Her personal interest lies in user generated content. This was first pursued in a project on 60s fashion. Visitors were asked to email in their pictures, with a short description. “You get the emotions, you get the excitements of a fashion, you do get the sort of thing that a non curator would probably expect to write about that dress if they have it in their collections” explains Mrs Durbin at Social Media for the Scottish Cultural Heritage Sector seminar. “You get completely different perspectives.” National Museum of Scotland is present on Twitter and Flickr. Hugh Wallace, head of Digital Media defines Twitter objectives for the museum: “to extend reach of existing communications, informal, conversational voice to promote engagement, build a local, national and international group of followers, promote events and exhibitions and drive traffic to the National Museum website.” Settings clear objectives when using social media is important. “People get hung up on the need to have a page on Facebook, or a presence on Twitter, or a bunch of videos on YouTube without necessarily considering how this adds value to their overall digital presence or benefits the organisation” adds Mr. Wallace. Not every social media will bring benefits to the organisation. They have to be carefully considered and presence on them should be carefully designed to meet the organisation’s goals. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum has an account on Twitter with 2,813 followers. Glasgow Museums, the group of which all public museums in Glasgow are part, has had a YouTube channel for 4 years. They have 33 videos with 1741 total views and only 6 subscribers. This is clearly a disappointing number, and Glasgow Museums need to look at ways to raise their profile on the web. It is worth reflecting on such a difference between videos view statistics on Glasgow

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Museums and V&A channels. What Glasgow Museums do wrong to and how they can reach more viewers. The V&A channel features footage from behind the scenes, the “Conservation in Action” series, artists talking about their works, educational videos about art and general videos about V&A. Glasgow Museums channel is filled with talks and conferences. There is no video showing any of the 8 museums which belong to the organisation. There are no videos which would encourage people to visit museums or relating to the collections. Glasgow Museum should reconsider the purpose of being on YouTube, which ought to be to advertise museums, help people to engage with the collections and bring additional value. Looking at the appearance of museums at social media it can be said that proper use of them can supplement museum experience, bring more visitors and allow museum to create attractive educational content. Museums learn along with individual users but they cannot forget that they primary goal in social media should be promoting education and culture. No matter if cultural organisations have been working for some times with social media like V&A and National Museum of Scotland or just starting like Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, there is still a long way before them to become a specialist in this topic.

Figure 23. V&A Facebook wall.

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Figure 24. Kelvingrove’s tweets.

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6. DESIGN From the literature review, case studies and interviews with specialist, it can be seen that that creating a virtual museum is a complex task which not all museums have the funding or knowledge to achieve. This is demonstrated in the prevalence of purely informational sites being incorrectly labelled as virtual museums and the scarcity of high quality sites. However, as shown by the likes of the Anne Frank online museum, a well executed virtual museum can provide an excellent visitor experience, allowing visitors to explore areas that are closed to the public, and be a part of a visitor’s memories without them ever having been in person. They make it possible for people who cannot visit real museum to engage with a collection and artworks, or simply to prepare for a future visit. Current virtual museums do not make allow for multiple users to visit together, and do not take under consideration the social side of the museum. Moreover the majority of sites present information too extensively, as an intimidating wall of text that can be boring, or just do not provide enough. Engaging with artworks can be difficult when objects are difficult to see properly or in detail. With the growing popularity of social media sites, I believed it would be beneficial to look for the possibility of creating virtual museum using them. An alpha version of virtual museum/ virtual walk was created for Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. The museum was chosen because it exemplified many of the issues that been identified, and several others. These issues include: • The museum does not have independent website • The museum has a very limited amount of digital resources • The museum cannot be closed or items cannot be removed from the display for the

time of creating virtual museum • Funding limits • There is nobody designated to take care of social media Lack of an independent website is a serious issue to overcome. Virtual museums are usually available through the museum’s website or on a connected micro site. In this situation it is crucial to look for another way of presenting the virtual museum. With limited digital resources it becomes necessary to create the content of the virtual museum from scratch. To create digital content chosen artworks or galleries should be digitised. How to accomplish this when items cannot be removed from the display or when galleries are full of visitors? How would the virtual museum be created using social media? If the virtual museum is to be created using social media, who would administrate for it?

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After talking under consideration the issues and questions it was decided to design the virtual museum using YouTube.

• The virtual museum is done in the manner of a virtual walk. It will consist of the series of the videos connected with each other using annotations.

• Videos will are public and everybody can see them but only people sign in will

are able to rate and comment on them.

• Everybody can share the videos on the social media.

• It is possible to embedded the videos on any website or social networking site. Video For the porpoise of the virtual walk it was decided that all recording would take place during usual opening hours of the museum. Pictures of the building, centre hall and west court were taken. Basic storyboards were created. Storyboards are not detailed because filming would take place when visitors are on site. It gives flexibility and the chance to include the unpredictable actions of visitors as would occur in the museum itself.

Figure 25. Storyboards Script Materials for the script come from the official Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum guide and had been used after suggestion of Mr Sumner. Few other versions of the script were prepared but this one contains authorized descriptions of each gallery. Text was divided between 9 scenes and provides general information about each gallery. Sound

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It was decide that sound captured by camera will be used in final videos. It is indented to have ambient noise of the visitors walking and talking in the video to create the impression of co-operative visit. Voice- over with will be added in postproduction. Navigation Navigation is based on actual museum layout. From each gallery the user will be able to navigate to the adjacent galleries in the real museum. Navigation is going to be created using transparent annotations, which are going to be lay on pictures, which will indicate directions.

Figure 26. Menu design.

Figure 27. Sketch of West Court Plan

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Figure 28. Menu planning

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7. IMPLEMENTATION Video Video was recorded at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum during two days. It was cut into nine short movies in the Final Cut Pro. Each movie is a representation of the entrance, the central hall, the organ concert and six galleries: West Court, Creatures of the Past, Ancient Egypt, Environment Discovery Centre, Glasgow Stories and Scotland’s Wildlife. After videos were put together it was necessary to apply a colour correction filter. The videos from the first day were shot in bad weather, and the saturation levels had to be increased in production. Saturation in videos filmed second day had to be reduced. In all video whites and midtones were adjusted. In a part of the Scotland’s Wildlife video, the hue had to be adjusted to show less red. When editing was complete, they were exported to Soundtrack Pro. As soon as the soundtrack was created it was added in the Final Cut Pro. Finished movies were exported using H.264 compressor and optimized for downloading.

Figure 29. Colour Corrector in Final Cut Pro

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Figure 30. Exporting options in Final Cut Pro Finished videos were imported to the Adobe After Effects and menus were applied. Soundtrack Soundtrack was created in Soundtrack Pro. First, sound recorded by camera was normalized to create background noise. Voice- over was recorded and cut to remove any breathing and other unwanted sounds. After that noise was reduced. In the end ready audio files were imported back to the Final Cut Pro and they replaced original sound. Uploading to the YouTube After video and sound edition was finished, files were uploaded to the YouTube. Titles were given to each video and tags were assigned. On every video annotations were applied. Annotation is an area which can be clickable. Annotation can be a hotspot, a text or a link. For porpoise of this project annotation is created like a clickable, transparent area which is connected to a link. These areas are applied on the menu icons and link videos. Viewers can explore museum and go to a gallery of his/ her interest. Navigation bar build into every YouTube video make possible to stop, fast-forward and rewind video. It makes available to change volume and view a video in full screen mode. Uploading the videos to the YouTube provide opportunity for viewers to make comments and have a conversation with other YouTube users.

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Figure 31. One of the videos on YouTube Videos are available on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nqKgcrsjbo

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8. Evaluation In order to gather the opinion of potential virtual museum visitors, the videos were posted on a specially created YouTube, making it possible to track views and comments and to provide statistics. Over the course of a month the tour has had 422 views in total. The most popular is the Entrance with 22% of total views. Second is the Centre Hall with 17.5%. The least popular videos are the Ancient Egypt and the Concert. The rest of the videos have similar percentage of views, about 10%. Videos are the most popular for the female audience- 85%, which gives only 15% of male viewers (this statistics apply only for register users with YouTube account). The most viewers are age between 25-34 (about 50%); viewers age 45-54 are about 45% and about 10% of viewers age 18-24. Videos were watched in United Kingdom, USA, Poland, France and Australia. The videos have 57 ‘likes’ and 14 comments. The Entrance has the most comments, 7, other videos 1 comment each. There are positive comments both on videos and the museum “Really good! Building is beeaauuttiiffuulll!” by glasgowianka “Best museum in Scotland. Cool to finally see something like this!” by morganstev “This looks reall interesting” by Vonnie59 On the videos also commented Dr John- Paul Sumner: “project clearly takes the visitor on a Journey from the Entrance to Kelvingrove, through a virtual tour of the galleries. This is enhanced by commentary from the official guidebook, ensuring that all the details are accurate. You have also left 'space' for the natural sound ambience of the galleries.” He also makes comments how videos can be improved in the future: “If you had had more time I would make only one improvement to the film. This requires knowledge of the collections, which you, understandably, do not have as much as me. I would try and edit the film so that when the commentary mentions an iconic object like a Spitfire or the Orrery (model of the solar system) the image matches to commentary, so that when the Spitfire is being mentioned we see an image of the Spitfire... but you would need our help with that. Plus my other comment, be careful with the Organ, because four minute is too much 30 seconds was enough for me, plus the music that the organist plays is usually copyrighted.” He finish his comments adding:” It is a very positive reflection of Kelvingrove.

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Technically you have produced a very smooth viewing experience.” 422 views for 9 videos in a month it is a good result when comparing to 33 videos with 1741 total views in 4 years (Glasgow Museums channel).

Figure 32. Video statistics on YouTube

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Figure 33. Comments under one of the videos.

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9. Conclusion 9.1. Critical Analysis There are a number of aspects of the work that could be implemented in a different or improved manner. Recording of the videos should be better quality. Videos are too shaky and look like most of them were filming from the hand, not with use of a tripod. There are too many zoom in and zoom out effects and not enough still images of the museum objects. Some shoots of details from the video Entrance should be replaced. For example there is too much sky at 0:24 and 0:44. In Scotland’s Wildlife, there are moments when video is not sharp like at 0:09. In this video colours should be better. This gallery was very hard to film because of its colour scheme, which appears entirely red when the outside light is very bright. It would have been beneficial to create videos in aspect ratio 16:9, not in 4:3. It would be better visible in the YouTube channel. The length of the videos work fine, with the exception of the Concert as Dr Sumner suggest. The Concert video could be shorter, and the sound quality is not high enough to really enjoy the music. Keeping background sound, though reduced, has worked well. It gives the feeling that viewer is visiting museum with other people and portrays a vibrant, living location. Videos on YouTube were only posted on a personal Facebook page and Twitter. This will have restricted the number of people likely to find them. It would be necessary to embed videos on the museum web page or post them on the museum Twitter account. More people will have access, and some would likely share them using social sites, expanding the reach of the project enormously. It would also allow for better evaluation if the videos available for a longer period.

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9.2. Future Work This project was designed to constantly grow with time. Using this project as a base, there are a number of projects that can extend beyond it. Videos can be added to the existing YouTube channel. Future videos can be connected to the tour, with videos of events standing alone or connecting for limited periods. There can be special videos created for diverse audiences. For example, a series of videos for children, where they can choose their own path through the museum or make quizzes. The most important objects can have their own annotation, which will take viewers to the museum page with in depth description of it. With YouTube is it also possible to make videos more accessible by adding subtitles. One video can be assigned many subtitle tracks. They can be in English to make video available to hear impaired people or in the most popular foreign languages for visitors from outside Scotland. Users can choose between different tracks or disable them at their convenience. Using YouTube the museum can build a community of subscribers. As has been mentioned, videos from YouTube can be easily embedded to other social networking sites, or indeed any other website, which will be very useful in sharing the works of the museums. The project requires no maintenance, and will remain on the server where it can be viewed without any inconvenience on the museum’s part. If the museum would like to carry on with promotions and connect with visitors through videos, it could be interesting to look at the new site www.artbabble.org, which is dedicated to videos about art. To post videos on this site museums have to become approved partners.

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9.3. Personal Reflections At the beginning I had big plans and plenty of ideas. I was dreaming about creating a vast 3D virtual museum where people from around the world could engage with objects and communicate with each other. But creating virtual museum in 3D environment requires not only extended specialist knowledge in many areas, but also a lot of money. In addition, not every museum wants or needs to create a virtual museum. After conversations with professionals, I decided to look if it is achievable to create a virtual museum using social networking sites. I had to learn how museums use social media and how this helps them to achieve their goals. I attended a seminar on Social Media for the Scottish Cultural Heritage Sector, which allowed me to look at current museum activities in this field. The main idea of the project clarified after the week 12 meeting with my supervisor and the second marker, at which point it was suggested to create an interactive video. Meeting with Dr Sumner from Kelvingrove museum also helped. He explained what museum is currently doing in social media and the museum’s presence on the Internet. At this point I knew what I would like to create- an interactive video for Kelvingrove museum. The best way to create that seems to be using Adobe Flash. However, to show flash video to an audience it would have to be embedded into the web page. Unfortunately, Kelvingrove museum web page is dependent from Glasgow Life. A new way had to be found. I decided to use annotations on YouTube, which allows for creating links between videos. In my opinion this decision was very good for this project. It gives many opportunities mentioned before for the museum. Users will benefits too. Videos are easily accessible via YouTube. Viewers can comment on them and engage with the LikeKelvingrove channel. There are some parts of the videos I would like to correct, such as the quality of the videos. Overall I’m happy with my project and it is a positive sign that people left positive comments on Youtube.

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9.4. Final Conclusion The need for finding new ways to connect with a wider audience, and have a discussion with them, is very important for museums right now. This project shows that this can be done using YouTube. It not only gives the background to create a social community but is also an interactive, virtual tour around museum. Project does not have to exist only on YouTube. It can be embedded in any social networking site or any website. Even if the project will not be carried on it will still exist on the website and users will be able to watch videos and leave comments.

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10. References Bertacchini P. A., Feraco A. (2008), Cultural Heritage 2.0 - A Web Based Community on Cultural Heritage and Virtual Reconstruction, Proceedings of IADIS Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems 2008, Amsterdam, 85-92 A Biographical Dictionary of Historic Scholars, Museum Professionals and Academic Historians of Art. Retrieved November 10, 2010 from http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/malrauxa.htm Brow, B., MacColl, I., Chalmers, M., Galani, A., Randel, C., & Steed, A. (2003). Lessons From The Lighthouse: Collaboration In A Shared Mixed Reality System. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. Ft. Lauderdale, 577- 584 Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved November 10, 2010 from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/630177/virtual-museum Gaitatzes, A., Christopoulos, D., & Roussou, M., (2001). Reviving the past: Cultural Heritage meets Virtual Reality. Proceedings of the 2001 conference on Virtual reality, archeology, and cultural heritage. Athens, 103- 109 Gutiérrez, M.A., Vexo, F., & Thalmann, D. (2008). Stepping into Virtual Reality. London: Springer. Heller, F., Knott, T., Weiss, M., & Borchers, (2009). Multi-User Interaction in Virtual Audio Space. Proceedings of the ninth international conference on 3D Web technology. Monterey, 4489-4494 Kalepsi, C., Willersdorf, S. & Zwillenber, P. (2010). The Connected Kingdom, How the Internet is Transforming the UK Economy. Boston: The Boston Consulting Group, Lister, M., Dovey, J., Giddings, S., Grant, I., & Kelly, K. (2009). New Media. A Critical Introduction (2nd ed.). Abingdon: Routledge. Mayfiled, A. (2008). What is Social Media, an e-book, icrossing.co.uk Miles, R., & Zavala, L. (Eds.), (1994). Towards the Museum of the Future. London/New York: Routledge Pan, Z., et al. (Eds.), (2006), Edutainment 2006. Berlin: Springer- Verlag Russo, A., Watkins, J., Kelly, L. & Chan, S. (2006) How will social media affect museum communication?. In Proceedings Nordic Digital Excellence in Museums (NODEM), Oslo, Norway. Sherman, W.R., & Craig, A.B. (2003). Understanding Virtual Reality. San Francisco:

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Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. Shiaw, H., Jacob, R. J. K., Crane, G. R., (2004). The 3D Vase Museum: A New Approach to Context in a Digital Library. Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries. Tucson, 125-134 Shiode, N., Kanoshima, T., (1999). Utilising the Spatial Features of Cyberspace for Generating a Dynamic Museum Environment. Proceedings of the fourth symposium on Virtual reality modeling language, Paderborn, 79-84 Styliani, S., Fotis, L., Kostas, K., & Petros, P. (2009). Virtual museums, a survey and some issues for consideration. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 10(4), 520-528 [Electronic version]. Retrieved October 18, 2010 from http://www.sciencedirect.com Various Authors, Essential Kelvingrove, (2010), Glasgow, Glasgow Museum Publishing Wojciechowski, R., Walczak, K., White, M., & Cellary, W., (2004). Building Virtual and Augmented Reality Museum Exhibitions. Proceedings of the ninth international conference on 3D Web technology. Monterey, 136-144 Zimmermann, H., Schramm, H. (Eds.), (1998). The virtual museum: new perspectives for museums to present objects and information using the Internet as a knowledge base and communication system. Proceedings of the 6th ISI Conference, Prague, 185-200. Internet references: http://www.youtube.com www.facebook.com http://twitter.com Britons spend nearly 'one day a month online', Retrieved May, 2011 from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10122834 Emma Barnett, It’s unsurprising that the UK loves social networks the best, Retrieved May, 2011 from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/8386080/Its-unsurprising-that-the-UK-loves-social-networks-the-best.html