Responding to msg by [log in to unmask] ("M. Travis") on
 
>thesis about how museums and galleries are using the internet.
If anyone
>else is also researching this, or just knows of some good
sites to
>explore, please let me know. One place to look is the "Strange
 
>Interactions" show on the Amanda Gopher at the University of
Wisconsin.
 
 
So far I'm rather disappointed in the ways museums have
employed internet acces to their collection information.  I've
seen what amounts essentially to list databases.  You can query
on a single term (no fielding allowed) and obtain a list of
items, but no other information.  For example, at
gopher.peabody.yale.edu I queried mamalian skeletons for the
word "elephant" and obtain a record from Alaska: a wolf
skeleton from "Elephant Point."
 
The Whitney Museum NYC (echonyc.com) offers some interesting
historical data, a year by year summary of the museum, a list
of exhibits, etc.  But these are essentially text documents.
To obtain really valuable data users must be able to do a real
query of at least a portion of the data and be given a
relational-like environment in which to operate.  Queries for
objects should be able to produce attribution data, history of
use data and bibliographical info.
 
I believe we have some ways to go still.