Amy Douglass comments:
 
>The one thing that these virtual museums are missing is the multi-sensory
experience.
 
Agreed.  Nor is it enough to be multi-sensory.  A virtual museum, in its full
expression, should surely involve the same types of visitor participation and
choice-making that would be found in a physical museum.
 
What we are seeing on the Web are certainly not experiences of virtual reality
in its full conception.  I would hardly even use the term prototype;  more a
precursor, a taste of the future, network-delivered possibilities of remote
museum visiting.  We have to take  technological limitations as a given when
talking about "virtual museums" on the Web, although experiments with 3-D
representation, interactivity, etc. reflect the stretching of boundaries.
 
But then it could be suggested that many museums are not really multisensory,
providing only a visual experience.  Also, bear in mind that it was for many
years a matter of debate whether places such as the Jorvik Viking Centre, or
hands-on institutions such as children's museums and science centres, and
multisensory sites such as heritage parks really qualify as museums at all.  In
the minds of some, they still don't.  As a strand from another current
discussion on the list, re. naming of an institution, indicates, the
appellation "museum" may not be seen as communicating multisensory or
interactive.
 
It will be that much harder to define "virtual museum" in the absence of
consensus on the essence of "museum".
 
Stephen Alsford
Special Projects Officer
Canadian Museum of Civilization
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