Virtuella museer - vision eller verklighet?

Abstract

Virtual museums have the potential to change the museum as a concept. They can reach and attract new audiences. Sweden has a high proportion of Internet users. That is why museums have a great opportunity to show their virtual exhibitions to more people. With all these possibilities, why aren’t the virtual museums in Sweden more advanced? In order to answer this question we interviewed four different museums in Gothenburg about their virtual exhibitions and their plans for the future. The purpose of our work was to compare the visions in the theory with the actual practice in order to discuss the differences and the similarities. Our investigation has gained new knowledge about what difficulties museums experience with digitalisation of objects and exhibitions. Therefore we claim in our analysis that the theory is lacking on several points. Our final conclusion is that the managers at the museums aren’t familiar with the possibilities of how the Internet can reach new audiences. They don’t have the budget because they don’t have the virtual museum as a priority. That explains why the vision of virtual museums that we found in the literature has no correspondence in the reality.