== EIGHT EUROPEAN MUSEUMS TEAMING UP FOR EMN. And Where to Go From Now <ref> in: Museums and Interactive Multimedia. Proceedings. Sixth International Conference of the MDA. Second International Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums {ICHIM II}, pp. 344-349, 1993, Cambridge, England</ref>==

This paper is a report on the European Museums' Network (EMN), a telecommunications and multimedia project initiated and fostered under the EEC "RACE" programme in the past four years. It also includes the outcomes of the project and the lessons it taught us for future inter-museums' multimedia co-operation.

Eight museums from eight European cities, namely Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, Den Haag, Bremen, Bremerhaven, Copenhagen and Hamburg, teamed up for the venture, plus four technical partners rooted in six European countries.

In fact, the EMN project has triggered off co-operation and interaction between museum experts of the various scientific disciplines. It was proven that, with the help of new electronic media, barriers between the various museum collections can be overcome, and that it is in fact possible to integrate a common stock of pictures and other documents in what one may call a “Virtual Multimedia Museum”.

=== Imagine ===

Imagine a visitor sitting down at one of the micro-computers installed in the information cabinet of a particular museum.

He will be offered an interactive keyword structure enabling him the selection of exhibits he is looking for. But this is not all. He will be capable of linking terms and other non-verbal expressions with the images, and to evoke, through this very procedure, new and unexpected visions and combinations, thus combining both seeing and thinking. All this will happen on a basis of a virtual collection of museum objects which, under normal circumstances, he would barely have a chance to ever see side by side. In other words: The virtual multimedia museum enables him to individually experience what may be called "instant cultural integration".

Of course, the EMN project, being only a pilot project aimed at the demonstration of viability, was of very limited size. At project's end, the system featured 800 museum exhibits contributed by the eight partners. As part of the concept it had been up to each partner to select the single items, and there were no formal or topical restrictions for their respective contributions. Each of the exhibits came along with a wealthy pool of keywords. On top of this, over 4,000 multimedia information packages, each filling up to ten screens, were incorporated in the system. This includes many thousands of images, black and white or color, imbeded in text and/or along with sound documents.

Although, unfortunately, the co-operation of the partners came to an end with the termination of the funding of the project, most of the museums involved are going on still feeding the system. So, the data base of the EMN is steadily growing. The memory is extendable, and multimedia production is easy to learn. The system is freely portable and can be installed in every museum, so that it is a safe assumption that more museums will join the venture. Each museum is free to contribute additions to the data pool at its discretion. This may be carried out not only by the museum professionals proper, but by experts of all kinds.

=== Two special programs === Two special programs have been developed as part of the project, according to the requirements elaborated and put forth by the experts of the participating museums. It was a condition that all data should be "real life", and much care was given to the question of how to prevent boredom, or even the creation of what one day could at best be considered an impressive data cemetery.

== The Visitor Program ==

The Visitor Program of the EMN system provides two different ways of approach, the <big>Keyword Navigation</big> and <big>Guided Tours</big>.

Every museum is free to implement its own Guided Tour. In terms of the EMN project, the Guided Tour may be considered as the standard way to access the knowledge sources contained in the system.

<big>The Keyword Navigation is the more important, and truly innovative part of the Visitor Program. Keyword navigation was designed in order to enable a general public supposed to have no specific or scientific interests, and a dislike of being taught, a verbal more game like approach to the exhibits of cultural relevance.</big>

The visitor is free to choose his own words, and at any time is in full command of the steps he may be inspired to take on his trip around the international, pluri-disciplinary museum landscape, whereby he may discover new and even surprising correlations between the artefacts “on show”, their history, meanings, motives and values.

The user then picks and clicks out of the pool a set of terms which he associates most with the object. The system will prompt with a choice of objects out of the common pool that matches with these keywords. The display then is a set of minipictures along with the terms which caused the selection of the new pictures. These ones can now be enlarged, one by one, and their corresponding information and multimedia background can be explored. Each point of interest may then serve as a starting point to further navigation, and further gathering of information.

This special part of the system will be the Dynamic Knowledge Acquisition Adaptor.

This all is quite ambitious, I know. But, basing ourselves on the most positive experience we were able to yield, thanks to the EEC and the partners in the EMN project, and knowing about some rather fresh technical advances which are now ready to be applied, we are confident that a system of this type is viable, both from the technological point of view as well as from that of inter-institutional co-operation.