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Design, information organisation and the evaluation of the Virtual Museum of the Pacific digital ecosystem

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Abstract

This paper reports on the design, organisation and evaluation of a Semantic Web application designed to deliver a collaborative tagging and navigation system for a digital online museum. The key technical features of our application—called the Virtual Museum of the Pacific—centre on a browsing and retrieval interface based on formal concept analysis, query-extension for text search over a concept lattice, an extensible distributed data model to support collaborative tagging and its Web Services implementation. The objective of the project was to provide a practical demonstrator of an formal concept analysis-based system for browsing museum content, while reporting on its impact to the organisational environment and its relevance among stakeholder groups. This paper presents its key design features, an analysis of our collaboration with the Australian Museum and the results of two independent requirements gathering and usability evaluation sessions.

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Notes

  1. The term origin is used to denote where an object comes from. The body accessory and origin scales—when described within this context—denote the categories in which a set of attributes (e.g. neck ornament, polynesia) exist under. They do not themselves exist as attributes. Hence, polynesia and melanesia appear as attributes in the line diagram in Fig. 1, but origin does not, as it is simply the name of the scale that the attributes are grouped under. However, the attribute body accessories appears in the line diagram as it also exists as an attribute within the body accessories scale.

  2. ‘Predefined’ in this sense refers to the fact that the scales contain a set list of attributes based on the The Australian Museum’s formal taxonomy. New scales can be created, and likewise, attributes can be added or removed to existing ones. Conceptual scales only contain references to the attributes that they encompass—the concept lattices generated by their derived contexts, however, are not pre-computed.

  3. http://www.europeana.eu/.

  4. http://www.digitalnz.org/.

  5. http://www.flickr.com/commons.

  6. The Phaidon Design Classics iPad app covers a collection of 1,000 well documented and researched historical innovations in art and design. Anecdotally, it is considered and industry leader for its content and interactivity: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/phaidon-design-classics/id364304222?mt=8.

  7. http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/api/.

  8. As a comparison, the Getty’s Art and Architecture Thesaurus—an industry standard vocabulary used by museums—contains over 30,000 terms.

  9. In practice, only 609 terms were used as the Pacific collection did not cover the entire term vocabulary.

  10. The term domicile object itself is another case in point for query extension: the word ‘domicile’ refers to the legal definition of a residence or dwelling yet it appears out of place when describing materials of Pacific culture. The term was extended with house and domestic to better accommodate natural nomenclature.

  11. Such ideas have also been carried over into practice. For example, the website ArtFinder is built on the idea that enthusiasts can discover new artworks that may interest them. It uses a recommendation engine so that users can create their own personalised collections of artworks: http://www.artfinder.com.

  12. http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/collections/.

  13. This quote was in response to using the content-based retrieval features depicted in Fig. 5.

  14. Some institutions offer collection access via APIs. Examples include: Powerhouse Museum’s API: http://api.powerhousemuseum.com/api/v1/documentation/ Brooklyn Museum’s API: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/api/.

  15. Digital NZ is an aggregated cultural heritage portal with its own API: http://www.digitalnz.org/.

  16. Data from steve.museum available at: http://www.steve.museum/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Digital Ecosystems, University of Wollongong, Northfields Ave, Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia

    Peter Eklund & Tim Wray

  2. Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, Northfields Ave, Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia

    Peter Goodall & Amanda Lawson

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  1. Peter Eklund
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Correspondence to Tim Wray.

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Eklund, P., Wray, T., Goodall, P. et al. Design, information organisation and the evaluation of the Virtual Museum of the Pacific digital ecosystem. J Ambient Intell Human Comput 3, 265–280 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-012-0144-9

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