Telemuseum services via Internet: present and future
Authors: Cisneros Guillermo , Bescós Jesús , Martínez José M. 
Published: September 2017

This paper outlines telemuseum services status and international organizations founded on the basis of the RAMA project, which is also described.

The RAMA Project (Remote Access to Museum Archives) is one of the major initiatives in Europe sponsored by the Commission of the European Union under the RACE Programme (Research on Advanced Communications for Europe). Its main goal was to offer validated services to users through telecom networks on the basis of the Distributed Multimedia Databases belonging to the museums, and with “just a single manual for all museums in Europe”, regardless of the database contents infrastructure among other issues. The main challenge was to face the real problem of interconnecting heterogeneous environments, such as museums of different nature (different object registration cards for Archaeology, Fine Arts, etc.), different museum archives operating over Database Management Systems (DBMSs) of different vendors and with different and pre-orchestrated internal data structure (even in the case of common vendors), and different LANs operating under Software of different vendors, in order to offer the information retrieved through a common client/server application via Internet. The project has been user driven in such a way that the users validate all the stages of the project, thus ensuring the final acceptance of the products.

Besides the RAMA Project and services description, this paper also deals with the market opportunity of telecommunication services using museum databases from the viewpoint of the current status of the information providers as a “Content Owner Paradise”. A discussion is offered between the delivery of CD-ROMs as “electronic books” and telecommunication services database based as “electronic libraries”.

The RAMA services for museums (Information Provider Sites) are supported by an open, scalable, and interoperable multimedia system architecture, implemented on the basis of a low cost equipment set (clients being Windows PCs). Servers operate under UNIX, to ensure openness and interoperability. Full compatibility among different databases is ensured by the generation of a Common Query Mechanism, which is translated into the site Query Language by a suitable formatter/parser.

The first service developed has been called Telereseaich, destined for professional users. The scalability, based on the modularity and the object oriented approach for the software development, has been demonstrated by a quick development over the same client/server core of another application called Content Provision Service (Telepublishing-like) destined for publishers, and the integration of the Teleresearch service in existing teleeducational tools. Any other multimedia application or service can be easily developed using the same core system infrastructure.

The RAMA services are currently installed as preoperational via Internet at the RAMA participant museums and pilot user sites, as well as at about 20 museums elsewhere in Europe and the US. Currently, the RAMA Consortium is founding the IMIN (International Museums Information Network) as well as an exploitation company called Museums On-Line with US and European shareholders to deal with support, software maintenance, new services and products development, and museums network management. IMIN and Museums On-Line are two complementary bodies that, with the support of Public Network Operators (PNOs) in Europe and the Commission of the European Union, widely spread the RAMA results with a clear purpose of the exploitation of multimedia services for museums throughout the world.

RAMA has been presented in several forums, such as CIDOC'94 in Washington, EVA'94 in London, BRIS'94 in Hamburg, AACE'95 in Graz, and BRIS'95 in Dublin, among others.