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E-book Virtual Museums – A Plea : Around the Clock, Around the World
igitalisation and virtual worlds are increasingly permeating the cultural sector and the creative industries. When it is difficult for cultural offerings to find their audience, they can or must actively reach out to their audience. This also applies to museums, which can find and retain audiences in different ways and with different formats. Even a virtual museum is fundamentally a museum. Especially if it not only complies with the “ICOM Standards for Museums” and above all the museum definition adopted by the International Council of Museums in Prague in 2022, but also fulfils all the standards of the German Museums Association and ICOM Germany. The “Standards for Museums” are intended as guidelines, as a kind of “guard rail” for museum work and museum tasks. The respective characteristics and weighting vary from museum to museum and are essentially derived from the objectives of the museum founders and operators. Initially, this has nothing to do with analogue versus digital and offline versus online. According to ICOM, it is essentially about the tasks of researching, collecting, preserv-ing, exhibiting, interpreting and mediating. Virtual museums that exist exclusively online do this just as well or just as badly as the classic buildings made of marble, stone and concrete in the analogue, “offline world”, with their content and operators. Hybrid versions addition-ally utilize the other reality: the tried and tested offline museums use digital media and the internet to complement their work and use them where they are efficient and effective. A purely virtual museum also endeavours to make an appearance in the offline world. In addition to marketing-driven aspects, this is also to be able to offer something to the digi-tally neglected senses: Haptics, taste, smell, shared reception experiences. And finally: just as there are pop-up stores, there can and will also be pop-up museums.
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