A Knowledge-Oriented View of Web Technology

A Knowledge-Oriented View of Web Technology Adoption in Museums Evangelia Kavakli Abstract -- Interactive multimedia technology and the world wide web play an increasingly central role in the work of cultural organizations especially when they begin to embark on creation of new information resources, public outreach and online catalogue projects. Recent reports clearly indicate the high desire (or intention) of most museums to join the web. There are three primary reasons: (i) the high popularity of the technology among museum audiences (ii) the relatively low investment requirements, and (iii) the purported benefits that can be derived. Despite the excitement associated with web technology, it has become clear that its adoption is not as straight forward as many assumed it would be. This paper provides an overview of web application in museums and presents the main knowledge barriers obstructing web technology adoption. Furthermore, it discusses possible approaches for facilitating the process of creating the knowledge required for resolving these barriers. Rather than offering a comprehensive solution, this paper aims at gaining a broader understanding of the knowledge intensive problems facing museums and web professionals alike. Index terms – virtual museum, web application development, enterprise knowledge modeling, cultural information metadata standards

I. INTRODUCTION As the value of the internet as both a communications and educational tool becomes evident, even institutions with more conservative attitudes towards information technologies (IT) such as museums, recognise the possibilities it offers for the dissemination of information to a world wide public. The use of multimedia and the internet offers the opportunity to add a new digital dimension to the traditional museum. More importantly it offers new perspectives for ‘repurposing’ information collected by the museum in a variety of ways through the use of different media [1], thereby creating a ‘virtual museum’. University of the Aegean, Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, Mytilene, Greece.

The interest of museums in the application of interactive, multimedia technologies and the world wide web is stated in the annual International Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums (ICHIM) and the Museums and the Web conference, started in 1991 and 1997 respectively. This year, a major new on-line development for museums has been the announcement of a planned new Top Level Domain (TLD), .museum, for the exclusive use of museums. Currently, the Virtual Library Museums Pages (VLMP) maintained by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) provides an extensive directory of over 1000 on-line museums all over the world. In addition, early statistics on web visitors suggest that the public looks for and appreciates museum information on the Internet [2]. In other words, museums on the Web are doing reasonably well as far as the numbers are concerned. However, reports on how museums use their web site indicate that the majority of museums are still far from fully exploiting the potential of web technologies [3]. This paper investigates the issues related to web technology adoption in museums from a number of interrelated perspectives and discusses the possible approaches towards the resolution of the knowledge intensive problems facing museums and web professionals. II. MUSEUMS AND WEB TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION According to [4] three general levels of web technology adoption levels can be identified: Level 1: Information access. The technology is used as a tool for disseminating information about collections, services, and organizational policies, and to channel feedback from such internal/external entities such as employees and visitors. This type of museum web pages fall into the ‘online brochure’ category [5], which is essentially an advertising sheet format

like a brochure or handout. The information provided varies from basic information about the museum (i.e., name, address and opening hours) to short descriptions of the museum and its collections. In the case that museums have the ability to regularly update site contents, supplementary information may be added on special exhibitions and other museum activities. This type of web presence requires the minimum effort towards both the development and maintenance and is the most widely adopted. Level 2: Work collaboration. Web technology is used to facilitate real-time collaboration between different entities internal and external to the organization. Technology applications at this level include ‘virtual museums’ whereby digitized museum collections become available online. In the majority of cases such applications are in reality a collection of web pages organized in a logical sequence which offer a short guide to the museum. Other more sophisticated environments try to more fully exploit the possibilities of multimedia technologies providing 3D environments which the cyber-visitor can navigate freely either individually or in a cooperative manner (for example the Webtalk-I environment [6]. A different approach is advocated in [7], whereby instead of recreating the museum online, access to museum’s physical exhibits is provided over the internet through the use of appropriate web interfaces to a robotic avatar, realizing distant-user’s tele-presence. Another line of web adoption, concerns collaboration of museums with educational institutions (schools, universities, museums, and public libraries), through the use of educational web sites. These sites constitute searchable hyperbases containing quality electronic information about museum collections for educational use [8]. Level 3: Core business transactions. At this level the technology is directly integrated with core organisational functions. In the previous levels of adoption web technology is used as an extension of contemporary practice. A far more ambitious brief is to use web technology to re-engineer its core functions. This view is adopted by web information meta-centers [8]. In this context, museum web sites instead of acting as centralized information repositories they offer dynamic interactive experiences designed to service the needs of distinct user groups (museum professionals, tourists, students and educators, etc). Meta-centers do not just aim to increase public awareness of real museums, they are unique museum

experiences in their own right. Taking this idea further, hypermedia technologies may be used to exploit the freedom from the chains of physical reality and represent in electronically recreated worlds what would be desirable to see in real museums, but the constraints of physics prevent to do. Examples of metacenters are The 24 HourMuseum (www.24hourmuseum.org.uk), the Canadian Heritage Information Network (www.chin.gc.ca) and the Australian Museums On Line (amol.org.au). Nevertheless, due to economic, technical considerations and museum meta-centers are still rare. III. KNOWLEDGE BARRIERS TO WEB TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION Recent studies [9] indicate that currently the use of web technology is more focused on the use for advertising and marketing purposes (i.e. Level 1). This is especially true for small museums with limited resources [10]. Adoption at higher levels calls for tighter integration of technology with business context and this poses considerable knowledge barriers. In order to systematically consider knowledge requirements related to web technology adoption, we use the four worlds framework depicted in Figure 1. H o w do es t he sy stem int eract s wit h intern al an d ext ern al users?

Subbjeject ct Dom Domain ain Su

Usage age Us

W h at criteria are used to ev aluate sy stem usability ?

H o w is k no wledge abo ut th e do m ain comm un icat ed by t he sy stem?

System tem Sys

Deve velolopm pmeent nt De

W h at strat egies / m eth o do lo gies are used fo r sy st em dev elo pm ent ?

Figure 1: The four worlds framework Originally proposed for system engineering [11], it can be used to classify different kinds of knowledge involved in web application development. The framework makes the distinction between four ‘worlds’ that describe the subject domain (i.e., the real museum environment), the web-based system to be developed to support it, the development process itself and the world of users. Each world poses specific knowledge barriers. Domain-related knowledge barrier. This relates to the lack of knowledge regarding specific business objectives that will be served by the museum web-based application, the

value of the various technology features for the museum, the key assumptions required for deploying the technology, the potential for integrating with existing Museum Management Systems, the impact to existing organisational policies and licensing models (e.g., data ownership and information sharing models, copyright concerns). While such issues can only be resolved after taking into consideration the culture and history of the organisation, the need to make this knowledge explicit is often forgotten in the haste to deploy new and sophisticated technologies. System-related knowledge barrier. This relates to the lack of knowledge regarding the appropriate hardware and software infrastructure, technology features, and data conceptualisation standards. For example, a number of issues need to be addressed prior to adopting a 3D interactive web site: should one use browser specific features (e.g. VRML browser) or go for an all Java solution; what are the bandwidth requirements of the application; how can we minimise failed connections, and so forth. Technology-related knowledge barriers are intensified by the fact that much of the web technologies are not yet mature, making the task of choosing among alternative solutions a challenging one. Usage-related knowledge barriers. This relates to knowledge regarding the characteristics that contribute to effective applications – such as suitable access structures and cooperation attitudes, relevant presentation metaphors, navigation behaviour, and information contextualisation. Problems in this area stem from lack of understanding of user’s cognitive, behavioural and attendant characteristics and the characteristics of the processes they will be involved in. Despite the importance of the usage perspectives studies have shown that contemporary web sites were designed based on developer’s intuition rather than reflecting user requirements [12]. Development-related knowledge barriers. They relate to the development process itself and the method used, the techniques appropriate for assessing the application and the personnel involved. Examples of these issues are: what is the most appropriate design method; what are the criteria to application assessment; who should be involved in the development; who should be responsible for maintaining and updating the information content; what should be the outsourcing strategy?

IV. ADDRESSING THE KNOWLEDGE BARRIERS Whilst the knowledge barriers are relevant to all three adoption levels discussed in section II, it becomes evident that they increase in intensity as one moves from Level 1 to Level 3. For example, usage-related concerns while relevant even at Level 1, become more critical at Level 3, as the nature of the information usage changes and user expectations increase. Similarly, integration of the web technology with core museum functions (Level 3) requires deep knowledge of the museum’s structure, missions and objectives although such deep understanding may not be necessary at Level 1. Regardless the adoption Level, having a website is going to demand new work processes and new responsibilities and museums must be ready and willing for this change. Even if a museum is willing to pay a professional company to establish the initial site, new processes should be established in order to maintain and update the site’s contents. As the Level of adoption increases, so does the change that is required from the museum in order to take advantage of the opportunities offered by web technology. The majority of research approaches exploring the issues facing museums on the web address mainly technology concerns related to alternative technical solutions and their usability (i.e., system and usage related concerns). In particular, regarding system usage there is a growing body of knowledge with respect to usability criteria concerning: site functionality [13]; accessibility [14]; branding issues [15]; and the use of specific technologies (e.g., flash, panoramic video, 3D graphics and reconstructions, immersive imaging and so on) [16; 6; 17]. Such criteria have resulted from of user studies among art and science students, as well as, from web visitor statistic analysis with respect to hit counting, length of visit, pages looked etc. However, no extended user surveys have been performed in order to investigate user needs and the ability of different user groups to use new technologies [17]. Regarding system concerns there is a large body of work in the area of cultural information metadata standards for accessing and exchanging museum information and ensuring co-operation with existing Digital Library Systems and Museum Management Systems. Such efforts include the CIDOCCRM [18], MARC [19] and Dublin Core [20]

standards. Different implementations of these standards have been achieved using XML/SGML and RDF. Another line of work in this area, concerns comparative evaluation of off-the-shelf system solutions. For example, [21] evaluates a number of integrated solutions addressing all aspects of the publication chain from digitization, over indexing, administration, web presentation, printing to electronic commerce. However, less effort is devoted in understanding how web technology adoption relates to other organizational components, or the effect that the web will have on the museum itself. Such ‘organizational’ issues correspond to domain-related and development-related knowledge requirements described in section III.

Enterprise goals do not just shape the current enterprise structure. They also set the vision for organisational change or organisational improvement. To this end, enterprise goals establish the context of organisational change (i.e. the objectives towards which the change effort is targeted). For example, the goal ‘provide timely information to virtual visitors’ sets the context of the new museum processes. Achieving this goal can be seen as a gradual process which encompasses the causal transformation of the initial goal into one or more subgoals until a plausible business process specification that satisfies the original goal has been defined. Prov ide time ly inf or mation to v irtual v is itors

W HY

Obtain human res our c es to s uppor t c ontent building and updating

Build new c ontent

W HA T

W HY

Dev elop time line f or c ontent upload

Modeling organizational knowledge is the subject matter of ‘enterprise knowledge modeling’ approaches in the software engineering domain [22][23]. The term enterprise knowledge modeling refers to a collection of conceptual modeling techniques for describing different facets of an organization including operational (business processes, structures and work roles, flow of information, etc), teleological (purpose) and software system considerations as shown in Figure 2. In te n t io n a l F e a tu re s Goals

M u s e u m O b je c t iv e s re a lis e d _ b y Obje cts Actors

Rule s

Ro le s Activitie s

M u s e u m P ro c e s s e s s u p p o rte d _ b y

Software System Com pone nts

O p e ra t io n a l F e a tu re s

M u s e u m S ys te m s

Figure 2: Enterprise Knowledge Modeling Views An important aspect of enterprise knowledge modeling is the representation of organizational goals. Indeed processes constitute the means to fulfill strategic enterprise goals. For example, the process ‘publication of promotional brochures’ contributes to the achievement of the general goal to ‘promote museum activities’. A process can also seen as a purposeful system in itself. Each role involved in the process intends to achieve one or more defined goals.

Outs ourc e c ompetenc ies

Ac quir e c ompetenc ies

HOW

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L eg en d Goal A ND Train ex is ting mus eum pers onnel

OR

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Figure 3: Goals define the context of enterprise change In our example the original change goal the original goal ‘provide timely information to virtual visitors’ can be refined in the subgoals ‘build new content’, timeline for ‘develop content upload’ and ‘obtain resources to support content building and uploading’. The latter can be consecutively

refined

into

the

following

alternatives

‘outsource competencies’ or ‘acquire competencies’. This is graphically

represented in Figure 3. Any goal at each refinement level describes WHAT needs be done. At the same time this goal can also be considered as an end (WHY) for another goal, as well as means (HOW) for still another goal at a higher level The identification of alternative subgoals can lead to the identification of alternative ways to achieve a business goal and therefore alternative ways of shaping the business. Thus, enterprise knowledge modeling can help museums to consciously develop schemes for implementing changes . In addition, a major benefit of enterprise knowledge modeling is in its ability to

HOW

facilitate the sharing of domain knowledge. Such knowledge can be externalized in terms of generic knowledge patterns that can be reused in similar settings in different applications. This in effect can drive the identification, definition and ultimately dissemination of best business practices that can guide the adoption of web technologies in museums. V. CONCLUSIONS Interactive multimedia technology and the world wide web play an increasingly central role in the work of cultural organizations which act to conserve, preserve and improve access to our cultural and natural heritage. Web technology is a an example of an innovation that need not involve significant investments by the adopter but still may pose significant knowledge barriers. Web professionals have come to understand that resolving knowledge barriers is not just a matter of transferring some information about the technology to the adopting institution [11]. It requires a much deeper involvement to understand the unique organizational situation and to wed the technology to that context. In practical terms, there is a need for a new generation of professionals that can act as an intermediary in the process of creating the knowledge required for adopting web technology. This is the subject matter of recent university courses, at both undergraduate and graduate level, addressing the topics of Cultural Technologies, Cultural Informatics and New Museology. Several factors portend the important role of such knowledge intermediaries: (i) the social and transforming nature of museums (ii) the rapid and continuous changes in the underlying technologies that create new knowledge barriers and (iii) the lack of key web-based development skills in the personnel of the adopting institutions. Commercial production of a Web site is expensive and often results in a site which may look impressive but may lack real content unless there has been a high degree of effective interaction with museum staff. Furthermore, maintaining a web site will inevitably require the design of new routines for ensuring timely information to their virtual visitors. From the developers’ perspective there is a need for tools for facilitating the cooperative process of elaborating and documenting the

required knowledge. From the museums’ perspective there is a need for techniques for analyzing and evaluating the effect that web technology will have on existing museum systems and processes. To this end, museum web application development can greatly benefit from conceptual modeling techniques that have been proposed in the software engineering domain and especially in these disciplines of software engineering which deal with the so-called ‘softer’ issues of systems development, in the sense that they address the social implications of systems development rather than the ‘hard’ technology issues. In particular, enterprise knowledge modeling techniques, can facilitate the analysis and documentation of the organizational domain and in effect assist museums to consciously develop schemes for implementing the organizational changes related to web technology adoption. VI. REFERENCES [1]

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