19.2.2003 / jcnVirtual Exhibits on Demand1 Virtual Exhibits Theory, methods, and tools for development of virtual exhibits on demand The VED Project plus.

19.2.2003 / jcn Virtual Exhibits on Demand 1

Virtual ExhibitsTheory, methods, and tools for development

of virtual exhibits on demand

The VED Project

plus

”A Whale of a Site”Paper for the Museums and the Web Conference, 2003

Joan C. Nordbotten, 1.amanuensis

Dept. of Information Science, University of Bergen

http://www.ifi.uib.no/staff/joan/

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Virtual Exhibits on Demand - VED

NFR project 2002-2005http://nordbotten.ifi.uib.no/VirtualMuseum/VMwebSite/VEDweb-site.htm

Project leader: Joan C. Nordbotten

Partners: Jan Erik Vold, IT director Bergen Museum

Anne Karin Hufthammer, 1.aman -”-

Participants: 1 – PhD stipendiat – Vibeke Vold Informasjonsvitenskap

6 – master/hovedfag projects started Fall’02 -”-

19 – hovedfag seminar students Spring ’03 -”-

NFR support: per year: travel + ca. 1300 hours (project assistants)

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VED Project motivation

The user – Teacher/student/researcher

– Requiring data/information about a specific topic

– “immediately” – or at most 1-2 weeks

The provider – Museums – world wide

– (Virtual) exhibit topics are determined by museum curators.

– Exhibits are hand crafted. Creation time in man-months

Virtual exhibits are:

– Local few collaborations across

museums

– Self-contained lack links to external sites

– Static predefined

On-line databases are for museum colleagues

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VED DB access problems

Information retrieval from museum databases is difficult

Problems include:

– Search interface assumes knowledge of collection DB

– Keyword search with list aids – moderate help

– QBIC (query by image content) is difficult to use

– Result presentation

• Without apparent order

• Bound to 1 DB

• Transient

– Little explanatory information

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http://americanart.si.edu/study/

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to develop IT methods, and techniques

to support development of

’on-demand’ virtual exhibits - search & save

from multiple DB sources

for educational applications

VED Project Goals

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DB test bed v.0.1 Oracle8i Bergen Museum, Oracle 9i at IFI

theme Whales Dept. of Zoology - Osteologi1. RDB-catalog Whale collection2. Document DB Text/Html documents 3. Image DB scanned images4. Video DB from excursions - Gunnar Langhelle, BM

Hovedfag projects: - started Fall ’021. Multimedia DB modelling & integration (2+1)2. Query language development (3)3. Data presentation (2)

Interface prototypes:1. Split-screen for image + documents2. Quadrant for images, facts, and video

VED Status – Feb 2003

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VED split-screen interface v0.01 Rune Vidareid, jcn March 02 http://nordbotten.ifi.uib.no/VirtualMuseum/demo/demo.htm

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Questions or commentson the VED project?

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”A Whale of a Site”

Anne Karin Hufthammer, Assoc. Professor

Natural History Museum, Zoological section

University of Bergen

Joan C. Nordbotten, Assoc. professor

Dept. of Information Science, University of Bergen

http://www.ifi.uib.no/staff/joan/

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”A Whale of a Site”

Paper for the Museums and the Web conference - 2003http://nordbotten.ifi.uib.no/VirtualMuseum/Publications/MW2003paperWebVersion.htm

Application for the VED project

Prototype development:Joan C. Nordbotten

Bengt Hjertholm, h-fag student Informasjonsvitenskap

Jan Erik Vold, IT director Bergen Museum

Prototype location: under development !!http://nordbotten.ifi.uib.no/VirtualMuseum/WhaleExhibit/demo.htm

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Goals for the virtual exhibit:– Present Bergen Museum’s (physical) whale exhibit 24 specimens

believed to be the largest of its kind in the world

– Support research, educational, and general public interests

Long-term goals:– Give virtual ’access’ to the whole whale collection 94 specimens

– Provide an interface to associated collections

Current focus: – Presentation of very large objects in a Virtual exhibit

– The use of video

VED - Whale Exhibit goals

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VED - Whale Exhibit context

Bergen Museum’s whale hall• 300 m2

• 24 whale specimens– 22 whole skeletons

– 2 crania

– 18 (all) N.Atlantic species

– 1.4 – 24m

– 10 skeletons > 5m

+ large and small fish+ coral

+ Development specimens

+ Images

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Imaging challenges– Very large & overlapping specimens

– Only 1 view/perspective available no 3D possibilities

– Lighting

– Funding

Video experiments:

For interface:1. http://museum.uib.no/demo/dyremuseet.MOV2. http://museum.uib.no/bmu/hval/qtvr/1.mov

For data presentation– http://nordbotten.ifi.uib.no/VirtualMuseum/WhaleExhibit/filmOKknoel.mov

VED - Whale Exhibit imaging

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Characteristics:– Gives ’walk through’ experience

– Easy/intuitive selection of supplemental information

– good proportions

Requirements:– Requires non-overlapping source objects

– Professional development• expensive to produce

• ’rigid’ – difficult to change/modify

– High-end PC with broadband connection required • unavailable to 97% of the world population (Internet survey

Jan.2003)

VED - Whale Exhibit video interface

http://museum.uib.no/demo/dyremuseet.MOV

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Problems:– 5 videos required for the 2 rooms– no natural transitions => ’walk-through’ – Distorted proportions– Relatively long load time

VED - Whale Exhibit whale hall video http://museum.uib.no/bmu/hval/qtvr/1.mov

File name -

File size MB

Pixel density

Mbit

Load-time – sec

at 18:00-18:30

Comments

QT/VR – 2 1.5 9 Acceptable quality

Ok zoom quality

QT/VR – 12 12-15 15 Good zoom quality

QT/VR – 70 250 49 Very good zoom quality

Zoomify 426 12 Slow image development

Very good image

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Characteristics:– Own production Nikon Coolpix 4500 digital camera

– Quickly done ca. 10 minutes

– Inexpensive

– Poor zoom quality

Plans:– Develop image/video clip for each specimen

– ’Match’ video time to skeleton length

VED - Whale Exhibit Video for data presentation http://nordbotten.ifi.uib.no/VirtualMuseum/WhaleExhibit/filmOKknoel.mov

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Characteristics:– Architect drawing as an interface – inexpensive in time requirements– Quadrant layout for specimen data

• Combination of:– Research collection and– Popular information

– Database based

Further development:– Design development– Addition of text query facility– ’real’ DB retrieval– Multi-Database access

VED - Whale Exhibit Prototypehttp://nordbotten.ifi.uib.no/VirtualMuseum/WhaleExhibit/demo.htm

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Takk for oppmerksomhet

VED

For more information

http://nordbotten.ifi.uib.no/VirtualMuseum/VMwebSite/VEDweb-site.htm

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VED interface, v0.01 - Rune Vidareid, jcn

http://nordbotten.ifi.uib.no/VirtualMuseum/demo/demo.htm

Bergen Museum, videos: http://museum.uib.no/demo/dyremuseet.MOVhttp://mediabase.uib.no/nafa/index.html

http://museum.uib.no/bmu/hval/qtvr/1.mov

http://museum.uib.no/bmu/hval/qtvr/enlink/1_enlink.mov

Whale exhibit prototype. V0.01 – Bengt Hjertholm, jcnhttp://nordbotten.ifi.uib.no/VirtualMuseum/WhaleExhibit/demo.htm

VED Early prototypes