Museum web-sites in Hungary
T. Biró Katalin*- Rajczy Miklós**
* Hungarian National Museum
tbk@ace.hu** Hungarian National Museum,
rajczy@bot.nhmus.huThe world-wide-web, www is probably the best known and most important achievement of large area networking, identified by many with the Internet itself. According to the historical summary located also on the net (
http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline) it was developed by Tim Berners-Lee from CERN (European Nuclear Research Centre) in 1991. Its operation is based on the HTTP protocol, by the help of which text, images and animation located at various parts of the world on different Internet servers can be connected and accessed by a simple click of the mouse. Very simple handling and vast content of immeasurable complexity contributed to a fast spreading of this media.Among the Hungarian museums, the first home-page prepared was that of the Hungarian National Museum, constructed by Ferenc Párdi and György Nagy in September 1995. After this, the presence of Hungarian museums on the net increased gradually. In the past three or four years, a dramatical growth could be observed. Recently, there are several hundred museum related Hungarian homepages on the Internet.
Compared to any other way of publication, the web is incredibly fresh and dynamical. This means a great possibility and, at the same time, responsibility for up-to-date coverage. In our paper, museum related aspects will be discussed from the following aspects:
- technical solution: who, and by what technical background operate museum web-sites in Hungary today
- contents: how we imagine an “ideal” museum web-site and how it related to present day practice
- availability and use: how do Hungarian museum web-sites fit in the elements of Hungarian and international net-world
- interactivity, reflections: web offers the possibility for an immediate contact with the widest audience, opening new dimensions for museum PR work. Is the Hungarian museum world ready for the challenge?
There are several catalogues, “link”-collections on a various objects included in the web; among them, on museum home-pages as well. One of the possible solutions is enrolling, subscribing to a central server. In this case the museum sends the information to the server and the server offers the formal schemes and prepares the pointer system or query face. Such servers will often give considerable amount of information on the subscribed museums. It is also possible that the museum cannot – or would not – operate an own homepage and trust this server, the content provider to disseminate information about the museum on the world-wide web. One of the most renowned content providers of this type is located at Düsseldorf, known as “Museums Of The World” (
http://www.museum.com).The other solution is when the collection of links is created and maintained by museum professionals or organisations, and the national lists are organised into a world-catalogue by a central server. In this case, the pointer system is available only, organised according to some points of logic. The best known world catalogue of this type is operated by the International Council of Museums under the name Virtual Library museum pages (
http://www.icom.org/vlmp). The relevant Hungarian museum list is set up and maintained by the Archaeocomp Association. A third "solution" is the list constructed (hacked?) by different touristic organisations, which have no immediate connection to the museum world and therefore often contain serious mistakes. It is our primary interest that the wide world should get authentic, professionally well based and fresh information controlled by the museums themselves. For this, however, we should do much more than today.