I think a museum's Web site has the potential to be more than a public
relations tool to help people plan a travel itinerary.  Web sites can
function as information arteries between museums or other sites which have
analagous information or are dealing with similar topics.  This is a
futuristic idea but try it out!  Its the year 2010 and a small museum in
Western China is holding an exhibit on neolithic ceramics.  Menewhile, the
Seattle Art Museum is holding a similar exhibit on Chinese and Korean
neolithic cermaics and the Louvre is holding one on neolithic ceramics
found around France.  All of these museum exhibits could be connected
through the Internet.  Touring the exhibit in Seattle one could step up to
a kiosk and be in China!  This kiosk may then connect the person to a
pre-columbian dig site in Honduras.  The possibilities are endless.  The
interconectivity of the Web will allow us to step out of the box-like,
categorical conception of traditional museum exhbits into the next
generation of exhbitis without walls.  Goodbye Newton and hello fractals.

>Dale Kutzera is right. A museum's Web site is analogous to a publication
>ABOUT a museum, or a string of linked publications--brochures, catalogs,
>etc.--NOT like a MUSEUM. If WE think a Web site is LIKE our museum,
>we'll give a very distorted idea of museums. BTW, IF people use the WWW
>to plan travel itineraries--as I think they might--this COULD boost
>"real" museum tourism.--David Haberstich

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Laura Lewis
Museum Education Specialist
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