Weaving the museum web: The Virtual Library museums pages Jonathan P. Bowen Abstract Museums have been discovering the Internet over the past few years like many other information provision sectors. Rather uniquely, they span both educational and commercial sectors, with a concentration of the original object even in this virtual world. The author has set up and developed the Virtual Library museums pages (VLmp) since 1994, an online international distributed museum directory. This is part of the WWW Virtual Library and is also supported by the International Council of Museums (ICOM). The directory is probably still the foremost such resource, but commercial pressures are building, and the resource must develop to ensure its long-term future. This paper explores the important developments so far, the current situation especially with regard to automatically collected virtual visitor statistics, and possible future directions for the VLmp directory and related resources. The author Jonathan Bowen is Professor of Computing at South Bank University, London, UK. E-mail: [email protected]; URL: http://www.jpbowen.com/ Keywords World Wide Web, online museums, virtual library, access statistics, education, museophile .

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1. Background The human race has used its developing knowledge and expertise to invent and create new technology since the dawn of civilization. It is likely to continue to do so at an accelerated rate, poised as we are at the beginning of the Information Revolution. Previously, technologies such as the telephone took decades to become widely available in the home. Now with the availability of the World Wide Web (Berners-Lee, 1999), advances in acceptance of this new technology’s use are measured in years rather than decades. The web is being increasingly used by a wide variety of people, and in all important industrial and related sectors, such as broadcasting, newspapers, hospitals, police, government, etc. Like other sectors, museums have been learning to use the World Wide Web technology at a rapid rate since it has become widely available from the mid 1990s onwards (Jones-Garmil, 1997). Museums are somewhat unique in that their size and the resources available to them varies enormously. Large internationally recognized institutions may have the resources or be able to attract sponsorship for significant investment in their website. Smaller museums are often run almost completely with the support of volunteers and the availability of a website may depend on the interest and expertise of an enthusiastic individual. The museum profession itself is quite widely fragmented on a worldwide scale. Countries with a significant number of museums tend to have national bodies, but even these may be split according to museum type. For example, within the UK, the Association of Independent Museums (AIM) is specifically for museums not set up by local or national government. Even where national bodies do exist, they have typically not led the way with respect to online development for museums (with a few notable exceptions). The availability of the Internet is an opportunity for the museum world to become less fragmented in the future. This paper explores development of online museums, especially with respect to an online museum directory established by the author before many museums had even heard of the World Wide Web. Some current access statistics are given, which allow information such as the location of virtual visitors and their software/hardware platform to be monitored. The paper ends with a discussion of possible developments in the coordination of online museum websites.

2. Virtual Library Museums Pages The Virtual Library museums pages (VLmp, http://vlmp.museophile.com/) (Bowen, 1997) were first established in 1994 as part of the Virtual Library (http://www.vlib.org/). The Virtual Library forms a distributed directory of online resources, originally established by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web (Berners-Lee, 1999), and is maintained by volunteer experts around the world. VLmp specifically provides a directory of museums that have their own associated website, organized and maintained by country. The directory grew rapidly into a significant repository for use by the general public and museum professionals alike, allowing convenient and up-to-date access to a leading directory of global online museum information. In 1996, through the encouragement of Cary Karp (based at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, Sweden), the International Council of Museums (ICOM) adopted VLmp as their main online museum directory. ICOM allowed the directory to be included on its main Web site (http://icom.museum/vlmp/) and its various mirror sites around the world (Bowen, 1996). There have been over five million virtual visitors to the VLmp homepage since the directory first started in 1994. Given the number of museums around the world, VLmp cannot be maintained by a single person. Thus, the directory has been split by country, with individual maintainers for each country. The Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) was the first to offer to maintain such a list for Canada and have been exemplary in their provision of support for museums online within that country. Within the United Kingdom, the mda (Museum Documentation Association) have adopted and then maintained the UK section of the directory. The maintainers are a truly global virtual community of around twenty people, most of whom have never met each other in person, but who altruistically maintain their section of VLmp for the benefit of others. A significant number of countries and continents now have separate lists as part of VLmp, often with information pages in the local language as well as English. See the list on the right of the VLmp homepage in Figure 1 for the names of countries that are actively participating. Links to museums in other countries are maintained under a “rest of the world” section. 2

Despite the significant amount of participation internationally, there are still a number of notable countries with a large amount of online museum information that are not participating in the VLmp project. ICOM national committees and individuals in countries not listed on the VLmp homepage, especially those with their own Web pages and existing technological skill, are encouraged to participate in VLmp. In this way museums links for individual countries can be maintained by local experts with a good knowledge of the museums in their country; e.g., see Blank (2000) and Razumov (2000). Once set up, individual country pages are conveniently and automatically mirrored around the world on a nightly basis for speed of access, and included in the search facilities of VLmp.

3.

Statistics

The automatic collection of access statistics for the Virtual Library museums pages directory has been undertaken almost since its original establishment in 1994 (Bowen, 1995). Initially the number of accesses to the main homepage was monitored as an estimate of the number of virtual visitors using the site. In addition to automatic collection of statistics, several surveys have been undertaken, using the main homepage of VLmp to publicize them. Typically, users have been invited to complete an online questionnaire (Bowen 1999). Other surveys have also investigated the habits of online museum visitors; e.g., see Futers (1997). Since the end of 1999, VLmp has been linked to two online (and free) statistics gathering websites. One (NedStat, http://uk.nedstat.com/) provides a simple and fast facility consisting of a single page of statistics. The information presented includes on visitors per day for the previous three weeks and per day of the week, and pageviews per week, hour, Internet top-level domain and region (continent). The eXTReMe Tracking website (see under http://www.extreme-dm.com/) provides information that is more complete over seven web pages for each site monitored. In this section we present some recent results collected for the VLmp homepage using this site. Table Ia presents the main overview table provided by eXTReMe Tracking. The statistics were originally collected over 135 days from 14 December 1999 to 27 April 2000 (Bowen, 2000). This statistics were reappraised on 19 July 2002 after 813 days (a period just over six times as long) and a similar summary at this stage is shown in Table Ib. Note that because of the way eXTReMe Tracking continuously collects statistics, the 2002 figures in this paper actually refer to the period from 2000 to 2002. Thus the 2000/2002 comparisons discussed are between the initial 135 day period and the full 813 day period. An interesting addition to the information compared to NedStat for instance is the provision of details of the hardware/software being used by the virtual visitors. Currently the typical visitor is (still) using the Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5 web browser under Windows 98 with an 800x600-pixel screen and 16-bit colour (i.e., around 65,000 different colours available for display). JavaScript is enabled by around 95% of VLmp users, although this leaves a significant 5% of people with JavaScript disabled. Thus it is still a good idea not to rely absolutely on JavaScript for a museum website, although it is obviously useful for added functionality if it is enabled. Interestingly, some aspects such as the most popular software and hardware have not changes for these two periods. However, the most popular web search engine to access VLmp has changed from Microsoft’s offering to the more technologically advanced and highly popular Google engine (http://www.google.com/). This continues to list VLmp as the top website for the keyword “museums”, largely due to the significant number of hyperlinks to this resource from other museum-related websites. The number of visitors per week has been relatively steady over the past few years. Table II shows the (unique) visitor numbers for each of the first 16 weeks in the year 2000. The statistics for 2002 are still very similar with only a slight increase in average numbers during the intervening period. This count provides a lower bound on the number of actual visits because of caching by intermediary proxy servers, etc. The actual number could be far higher but is difficult to gauge due to the limitations of automated statistics collection. In the early days of VLmp, visitor numbers rose exponentially (Bowen 1995) but this is no longer the case, probably due to increased wellfunded competition in terms of what is available on the web. The slight but pronounced peak around 7pm GMT corresponds with lunchtime on the American continent, indicating that web surfers in the US may be using their midday break to search for virtual museum resources even when at work. The number of visitors by hours of the days follows US working hours (see Tables IIIa & b), although the difference in the maximum and minimum levels is much less pronounced than in the past (Bowen, 1997). In 2000 it was less than a factor of two (around 1.8) whereas in the early days of VLmp it used to be more like 3.5 (Bowen, 1996). This may be an indication that the rest of the world is catching up a little with the US in Internet usage. However, interestingly, in 2002 the ratio has increased back to 2.4, so perhaps the US is gaining a slightly increased lead on the rest of the world again.

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The variation by day of the week is also much less dramatic than in the mid 1990s, as shown in Tables IVa & b. Previously there was a significant dip in usage at weekends since many people accessed the Internet at work. In 2000, although Saturday is still the day of least usage, the variation is far less marked. However in 2002 the variation seems to have become a little more marked again, perhaps indicating that business use of the web is increasing more than home use, or that people are using the Internet more in the weekday evenings than at weekends. Tables Va/b shows the visitor by the main Internet domains (which in general correspond to countries) and Tables VIa/b shows the visitors by continent. For half the accesses, it is difficult to gauge the location of the virtual visitor (e.g., numerical domains that have not been registered on the Internet correctly, .net domain, etc.). Of the rest, North American (largely US) accesses account for half those that can be located with a reasonable degree of certainty. Europe is not far behind at around a third of locatable accesses. The number of unknown (numerical) domains is around a third of total accesses and this has not changed much over time (Bowen, 1997). The US educational accesses (.edu domain) continue to appear to diminish, although this is really an indication of the increase in web activity by everyone else since universities have been using the Internet for decades and their usage is likely to be relatively static. There is little significant difference between the results for continents in 2000 and 2002 except in the case of Asia where, from a low base, there has been a 45% increase in percentage share (66% in absolute terms of daily accesses). This is largely due to the increase of Japan’s percentage share by 104% (133% in absolute terms). Another country where there has been a very significant increase in VLmp usage (and by implication, probably Internet usage as well) in Mexico, where the equivalent figures are 160% and 195%. South America has been an almost as significant increase in usage as Asia, with a 39% increase in share (or 60% absolute increase). Brazil and Argentina are the leading countries using VLmp on this continent. Africa continues to have very low VLmp usage, with no dramatic increase in percentage terms unlike Asia and South America yet (although it is at least keeping relative pace with North America in percentage terms). Table Vc gives a full comparison of accesses broken down by continent between the 2000 and 2002 figures. Table VIc gives a similar comparison between the top 15 Internet domains that accessed VLmp in the 2002 statistics. As previously mentioned, an interesting feature of the eXTReMe Tracking web statistics facility is the collection of information on the user platform. While Netscape used to be the leading web browser, in 2000 it was only used by about 31% of VLmp visitors. Microsoft Internet Explorer was used by over twice as many (65%), leaving only 4% using other types of browser. By 2002, the situation is even more polarised with 80% of VLmp visitors using Internet Explorer (up 24% of the 2000 figure), 18% using Netscape (down 43% on the previous figure), and only 2% using other browsers (down 56%). In particular IE version 5 usage has increased by 51% and Netscape 4 accesses have decreased by 45% in the 2002 statistics relative to their 2000 figures. Thus the variety of browsers is becoming less of an issue than it used to be. See Tables VIIa and b for further details of the different types of browser being used to access VLmp. Similarly, the Windows operating system is used by 90% of visitors. Mac users account for only 6%, Unix users 0.4% and others 3%. The figures have changed very little between the 2000 and 2002 collection of stations, although Unix accesses have declined from an already very small base. Tables VIIIa and b provides further details, including lesser-used operating systems. In 2000, over half (56%) of VLmp visitors had 800x600-pixel screens. 20% had 1024x768-pixel screens, but 13% still had 640x480 screens. In the 2002 statistics, the number of people with 800x600 resolution screens is little changed (up 2% of the previous figure). However the number with larger 1024x768 screens is now 30% of users (up 47% form the previous number). Other lesser-used but larger screen sizes are up by similarly dramatic percentage increases. On the other hand, 640x480 screen users are down by 53% and “others”, which may include text-based screens, are down by 69%. Thus there has been a significant shift to higher resolution graphical screens, as would be expected with advancing technology. However it is still important to cater for those with smaller screens. See Tables IXa and b for fuller information. About half (50%) of people using VLmp had 16-bit (65K) colour screens in 2000. 31% had 24-bit or 32-bit (16.7M) screens. However 12% still had 8-bit (256) colour screens and the remaining 7% had other indeterminate screens, a significant number of which could be monochrome. The 2002 statistics show the figure for 16-bit colour screens as little changed (up 4% relative to the previous value). 32-bit screens have risen dramatically by 31%, although 24-bit screens have risen less significantly at 9%. By contrast, 8-bit screens are down 38% (to a 7% share). Thus there is a marked move towards an increased number of screen colours, although it is still important to be careful with colour usage in graphics on web pages for museum sites. Tables Xa and b gives the details.

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By far the majority of referrals to VLmp come from other websites (87%, down slightly by 7% from 94%, see Tables XIa and b). However 12% come from search engines, up dramatically by 160% from 5% (Tables XIIa and b). Google is by far the most important and used search engine for VLmp, generating 47% of the search traffic. MSN Search from Microsoft generates around 23% of the search referrals and Yahoo 10%. In 2000, generated more hits for VLmp than Google. All the leading search engines generating more than 1% of the search traffic (and there are only eight of them) have had sizeable 3-digit percentage increases except MSN Search and Yahoo that are only in the 2-digit range (see Table XIIc). 32% of people are searching for the keyword “museums” when they follow a search engine link to VLmp (up from 25% in 2000). Other popular keywords can be found in Tables XIIIa and b. Tables XIVa and b show the top website referrers (not including search engines). 8% of such referrals come from the main homepage of the ICOM website where VLmp resides and this is little changed between 2000 and 2002. Many referrals come from other VLmp pages and museums. In summary, the statistics packages connected to VLmp provide a useful source of information about the general online museum visitor, although the figures should be treated with caution and are sometimes of limited reliability due to the automated method of collection. In particular, the geographic location, times of access and changing platforms used by virtual visitors can be easily monitored. The access statistics presented in this paper can continue to be monitored to provided information on further changes in usage.

3. Access Issues It is important that museum websites be as accessible as possible to a variety of web browsers, display screen capabilities, etc., especially for the main homepage and other major navigation pages. More exotic and less widespread features such as plug-ins should only be used internally (e.g., for a special online exhibition) with suitable warnings for those without the requisite facilities. From the VLmp access statistics, although dominated by a small number of browsers and platforms, it can be seen that a small number of people do access VLmp using a diverse range of software and facilities. Museums aim to be inclusive in the availability of their resources in general, and this is an aim of VLmp too. Access for the disabled is an important goal of most museums (Bowen, 2001). Online, specialized web browsers for the disabled are now available. For example, Freedom Scientific (http://www.freedomscientific.com/) produce the JAWS for Windows text-to-audio conversion program for the blind that allows well-designed web pages to be reasonably easily navigated. This browser is available free for a trial period, so museums can easily test their web pages if they so wish. WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) now allows another avenue for access to online museums via mobile phones. Information of particular relevance for museums includes opening times, prices and special exhibitions. The current limitations of monochrome and small mobile phone screens with limited bandwidth mean that web pages need to be designed in a minimalist manner. Many so-called “high-impact” web pages will not display well using WAP technology. Access on other non-PC-based equipment such as WebTV, by users not expert in the use of computers may increase. Future web access is likely to be increasing on devices that are not marketed as computers, even if they include computer technology. The increasing use of new technologies such as XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is likely to augment and subsume the HTML (HyperText Markup Language) pages currently widely available on the web (Yeates, 2002). VLmp will need to keep abreast of such developments to maintain its usefulness in accessing web pages in the future. VLmp has been deliberately designed to be viewable on a wide range of different web browsers. Advanced features that may only work on the latest browser technology, or on a specific platform, have been specifically avoided. Hence disabled and mobile phone access, for example, should be possible with minimal or no changes. VLmp is also intended to be highly accessible to disabled users, especially the blind. Note that the text page graphic at the top right of the main VLmp homepage (see Figure 1) is a link to a text only version of the site automatically and dynamically created by the freely available Betsie software originally developed by the BBC (http://betsie.sourceforge.net/) . In addition, it was pleasing that at a session on accessibility at the 2002 Museums and the Web conference (Getchell & Rubin, 2002), when asked which online museum he liked best, Brian Charlson, Vice President for Computer Training at the Carroll Center for the Blind (in Newton, Massachusetts, USA), himself blind, answered VLmp.

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4. Possible Future Directions Museums are increasingly displaying their URL in promotional material, letterheads, etc., as a way of providing an extra gateway to their resources. Figure 2 shows an example of a museum that has decided to display its virtual address and to omit its physical address from a locally displayed advertising hoarding (Bowen & Bowen, 2000). Two important areas for the development of online museum resources in the future are educational material and e-commerce facilities. The potential for a more interactive and collaborative learning experience on the web is great. There is also potential for educational synergy if museums themselves can collaborate and be coordinated online. The United Kingdom 24 Hour Museum portal (http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/) provides what is probably the leading gateway to all UK museums, galleries and heritage attractions, with over 2,500 entries. Billed as “The National Virtual Museum,” it provides resources for teachers, parents and pupils. A redevelopment in 2001 expanded this facility to aid the access of educational material in a pan-museum manner via a Curriculum Navigator, based on the UK National Curriculum. This aims to aid teachers and school children in using museums for educational purposes, perhaps before and after real museum visits. The European-based Virtual Library museums pages facility, run on a volunteer basis with no direct financial support, is unlikely to survive in the face of well-funded commercial concerns, even with the goodwill of the museum community at large. To help maintain VLmp as a leading museum portal for the future, a more commercially oriented initiative has been proposed, dubbed “Museophile” for museum lovers (see http://www.museophile.com/). This is intended to provide a Europe based and internationally oriented museum facility for commercial online activities that can help support VLmp on a more financially secure footing. If successful, Museophile and VLmp should act symbiotically to the benefit and ultimate survival of each other. Some museums have already embraced web technology in interesting ways, both individually (Lord, 2000) and as a community (Lord, 1999). The Internet has traditionally been very US-centric, but this has been changing as telecommunications throughout the world improves (Cohen 1999). However, it should be remembered we are still at a relatively early stage in the development of the Internet. Compare, for example, the early days of radio when there was little regulation (Hargittai, 2000). As the web increases in size, data mining of information will be increasingly important and difficult (Chakrabarti et al., 1999). The latest web search engines, exemplified by the market leader Google (http://www.google.com/), must use the structure of the web increasingly to discover important web sites (those with many links to them) and major portals (those with many links from them) (Bharat et al., 2001). Automatic revision of a website’s structure depending on the popularity of pages within the site could be a useful way of increasing the effectiveness of individual sites (Garofalakis et al., 1999). Since the establishment of VLmp, the International Council of Museums have initiated the new top-level domain name “.museum” intended mainly for use by real museums (under the official ICOM definition, which could change over time). MuseDoma has been set up to organize registrations under this new top-level domain (http://nic.museum/). As museums register and start to use their .museum name as their main web address, VLmp will obvious need to respond. It may be possible to automate or semi-automate such updates in the future with the cooperation of MuseDoma. Weaving the web of the future will be an ever-challenging goal for individual museums as well as online museum communities and portals. Both museum curators and web technologists need to collaborate so that museums use this new medium effectively in the twenty-first century, for educational, commercial and other novel purposes.

5. Conclusion This paper has presented issues concerning development of access to museum-related resources online. In particular, automatically collected access statistics for a widely used online museum directory, the Virtual Library museums pages (VLmp), have been explored. These help in the assessment of the location of VLmp visitors, the types of hardware and browser software being used, times of access, etc. Information on how users have discovered VLmp is also available. However, information on which museum sites users have visited from VLmp is more difficult to assess since this data is only recorded and saved in the web logs of the museum websites concerned (if it is saved at all). It is possible to use redirection hyperlinks to gain such information locally, but this introduces a delay in access for users and has not been done. This is one limitation of the statistics presented here. Although many users are converging on using a small number of platforms and browsers, there is still a significant minority using non-standard facilities. What is more, the current convergence may not continue in the longer term in that a wider range of browser devices such as mobile phones, interactive televisions, disabled access 6

browsers, etc., may become more easily and cheaply available as the Internet becomes even more ubiquitous. In addition, a significant number of users may use auxiliary software in conjunction with a standard web browser such as Internet Explorer, and this may well mask the true diversity of means of access. In general, like much of the rest of the Internet, the museum sector will see increasing commercialization of relevant online facilities. Where previous efforts have relied on volunteer and ad hoc efforts, a more professional and well-funded approach will be required for success in the future. The situation is constantly changing of course and fast effective adaptation to any developments is required to keep ahead or at least abreast of others in the same field. Acknowledgements: The statistics presented in this paper were made possible by eXTReMe Tracking (http://www.extreme-dm.com/). The International Council of Museums (ICOM) and many individual volunteers support the Virtual Library museums pages (VLmp). Without their help, the maintenance of VLmp would be impossible.

References Berners-Lee, T. (1999), Weaving the Web: The Past, Present and Future of the World Wide Web by its Inventor. Orion Business Books. Bharat, K.; Bay-Wei Chang; Henzinger, M.; Ruhl, M. (2001), Who links to whom: mining linkage between Web sites. Proc. ICDM 2001: IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, San Jose, California, USA, 29 November – 2 December, pp. 51–58. Blank, R. (2000), Professional information and cooperation: VLmp Germany and Virtual Library Museums. ICOM News: Newsletter of the International Council of Museums, Vol. 53 No. 2, p. 12. Bowen, J. P. (1995), The World Wide Web Virtual Library of museums. Information Services & Use, Vol. 15 No. 4, pp. 317–324. Bowen, J. P. (1996), On-line Museums. Revue: Informatique et Statistique dans les Sciences Humaines, Vol. 32 No. 1–4, pp. 29–44. CIPL-LASLA, Université de Liège, Belgium. Bowen, J. P. (1997), The World Wide Web and the Virtual Library museums pages. European Review: Interdisciplinary Journal of the Academia Europaea, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 89–104, January. Bowen, J. P. (1999), Time for renovations: A survey of museum web sites. In D. Bearman & J. Trant, editors, Museums and the Web 1999: Selected papers from an international conference, New Orleans, USA, 11–14 March 1999, pages 163–172, Archives & Museum Informatics, Pittsburgh, USA. URL: http://www.archimuse.com/mw99/papers/bowen/bowen.html Bowen, J.P. (2000), Weaving the museum web: Past, present and future. Proc. SSGRR 2000 Computer & Ebusiness Conference, L'Aquila, Italy, 31 July – 6 August. Also available as Technical Report SBU-CISM-00-29, SCISM, South Bank University, London, UK. * Bowen, J.P. (2001), Tackling web design & Advice on accessible website design, Museums Journal, Vol. 101 No. 9, pp. 41–43, September. Bowen, J. P. (2002), Museophile: A Community for Museum E-commerce. In D. Bearman and J. Trant, editors, Proc. MW2002: Museums and the Web 2002, Boston, USA, 17–20 April 2002. Also available as Technical Report SBU-CISM-02-08, SCISM, South Bank University, London, UK, 2002. URL: http://www.archimuse.com/mw2002/papers/bowen/bowen.html Bowen, J.P. & Bowen, J. S. M. (2000), The website of the UK Museum of the Year, 1999. In D. Bearman and J. Trant, editors, Proc. MW2000 Museums and the Web conference, Minneapolis, USA, 16–19 April 2000. Archives & Museum Informatics, Pittsburgh, USA. Also available as Technical Report SBU-CISM-00-28, SCISM, South Bank University, London, UK.URL: http://www.archimuse.com/mw2000/papers/bowen/bowen.html Chakrabarti, S., Dom, B. E., Kumar, S. R., Raghavan, P., Rajagopalan, S., Tomkins, A., Gibson, D. & Kleinberg, J. (1999), Mining the web’s link structure. IEEE Computer, Vol. 32 No. 8, pp. 60–67, August. Cohen, R.B. (1999), Moving toward a non-U.S.-centric international Internet. Communications of the ACM, Vol. 42 No. 6, pp. 37–40, June. 7

Futers, K. (1997), Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want: A look at Internet user needs. mda, Cambridge, UK. URL: http://www.mda.org.uk/eva_kf.htm * Garofalakis, J., Kappos, P. & Mourloukos, D. (1999), Web site optimization using page popularity. IEEE Internet Computing, 3(4):22–29, July/August. Getchell, P. and Rubin, E. (2002), Making your site accessible. In D. Bearman and J. Trant, editors, Proc. MW2002: Museums and the Web 2002, Boston, USA, 17–20 April 2002. Archives & Museum Informatics, Pittsburgh, USA. Hargittai, E. (2000), Radio’s lessons for the Internet. Communications of the ACM, Vol. 43 No. 1, pp. 51–57, January. Jones-Garmil, K., editor (1997), The Wired Museum. American Museums Association, USA. Lord, M., editor (1999), Museums and the Internet (1), Museum International, 51(4):3–41, October–December. Lord, M., editor (2000), Museums and the Internet (2), Museum International, 52(1):3–41, January–March. Razumov, R. (2000), VLmp Russia: The Russian Cultural Heritage Network. ICOM News: Newsletter of the International Council of Museums, Vol. 53 No. 2, pp. 12–13. Yeates, R. (2002), An XML infrastructure for archives, libraries and museums: Resource discovery in the COVAX project. Program: Electronic library and information systems, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 72–88.

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Figure 1. VLmp homepage.

Figure 2. Museum advertising hoarding.

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Summary

Period: 135 Days

Daily Unique: Yesterday Average Highest Day Weekly Unique:

913 / 26 Apr, Wed, 2000 931 1457 / 08 Feb, Tue, 2000

Last Week Average Highest Week Monthly Unique:

6667 / Wk 16, 2000 6286 8490 / Wk 05, 2000

Last Month Average Highest Month Highest Hour of the Day Highest Day of the Week

28689 / Mar, 2000 25145 34504 / Feb, 2000 18:00 - 18:59 Tuesday

Totals: Unique Visitors Visits incl. Reloads Reloads Visitors via Referrers Website Referrers JavaScript Enabled

125729 - 68.24% 184239 58510 - 31.75% 49551 - 39.41% 1403 118130 - 93.95%

Most accessed: Browser Operating System Screen Resolution Screen Color Search engine Keyword Domain/Country Continent

MSIE 5 Windows 98 800x600 16 Bit (65K) MSN Search museums - / Unknown Unknown

Table Ia. Statistics summary (eXTReMe Tracking) in 2000.

Summary

Period: 813 Days

Daily Unique:

Totals: Unique Visitors

823249 - 70.44%

Yesterday

858 / 18 Jul, Thu, 2002

Visits incl. Reloads

1168666

Average

1012

Reloads

345417 - 29.55%

Highest Day

1823 / 25 Oct, Wed, 2000

Visitors via Referrers

298117 - 36.21%

Website Referrers

17915

Javascript Enabled

779023 - 94.62%

Weekly Unique:

Last Week

4887 / Wk 28, 2002

Average

6639

Highest Week

10052 / Wk 43, 2000

Most accessed:

Monthly Unique:

Browser

MSIE 5

Operating System

Windows 98

Screen Resolution

800x600

Last Month

22879 / Jun, 2002

Screen Color

16 Bit (65K)

Average

26556

Searchengine

Google

Highest Month

42213 / Oct, 2000

Keyword

museums

Highest Hour of the Day

19:00 - 19:59

Domain/Country

- / Unknown

Highest Day of the Week

Tuesday

Continent

Unknown

Table Ib. Statistics summary (eXTReMe Tracking) in 2002.

10

9000

8000

7000

Number of visitors

6000

5000

4000

3000

2000

1000

0 Week 01

5820

Week 02

6467

Week 03

6745

Week 04

6183

Week 05

8490

Week 06

8475

Week 07

7923

Week 08

8450

Week 09

5567

Week 10

7026

Week 11

7271

Week 12

6794

Week 13

5612

Week 14

6504

Week 15

6611

Week 16

6667

Table II. Unique visitors per week.

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Hours of the Day 00:00 - 00:59 5681 4.51% 01:00 - 01:59 5547 4.41% 02:00 - 02:59 5191 4.12% 03:00 - 03:59 4689 3.72% 04:00 - 04:59 4050 3.22% 05:00 - 05:59 3474 2.76% 06:00 - 06:59 3474 2.76% 07:00 - 07:59 3788 3.01% 08:00 - 08:59 4274 3.39% 09:00 - 09:59 4852 3.85% 10:00 - 10:59 5282 4.20% 11:00 - 11:59 5207 4.14% 12:00 - 12:59 5752 4.57% 13:00 - 13:59 6035 4.80% 14:00 - 14:59 6012 4.78% 15:00 - 15:59 6018 4.78% 16:00 - 16:59 5594 4.44% 17:00 - 17:59 5864 4.66% 18:00 - 18:59 6188 4.92% 19:00 - 19:59 6058 4.81% 20:00 - 20:59 5823 4.63% 21:00 - 21:59 5625 4.47% 22:00 - 22:59 5524 4.39% 23:00 - 23:59 5727 4.55%

Table IIIa. Visitors per hour in 2000.

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Hours of the Day 00:00 - 00:59

31683

3.71%

01:00 - 01:59

31741

3.72%

02:00 - 02:59

31071

3.64%

03:00 - 03:59

34252

4.01%

04:00 - 04:59

25804

3.02%

05:00 - 05:59

22516

2.63%

06:00 - 06:59

20979

2.45%

07:00 - 07:59

22374

2.62%

08:00 - 08:59

25347

2.97%

09:00 - 09:59

28443

3.33%

10:00 - 10:59

30794

3.60%

11:00 - 11:59

37221

4.36%

12:00 - 12:59

40236

4.71%

13:00 - 13:59

38861

4.55%

14:00 - 14:59

43578

5.10%

15:00 - 15:59

45783

5.36%

16:00 - 16:59

45773

5.36%

17:00 - 17:59

44501

5.21%

18:00 - 18:59

43576

5.10%

19:00 - 19:59

50770

5.95%

20:00 - 20:59

48628

5.70%

21:00 - 21:59

39919

4.67%

22:00 - 22:59

36330

4.25%

23:00 - 23:59

32870

3.85%

Table IIIb. Visitors per hour in 2002.

13

Days of the Week Monday 17968 14.29% Tuesday 19458 15.48% Wednesday 18932 15.06% Thursday 18095 14.39% Friday 18243 14.51% Saturday 15836 12.60% Sunday 17197 13.68%

Table IVa. Visitors per day of the week in 2000.

Days of the Week Monday

125698

14.89%

Tuesday

153705

18.20%

Wednesday

130952

15.51%

Thursday

128276

15.19%

Friday

118736

14.06%

Saturday

89839

10.64%

Sunday

96912

11.48%

Table IVb. Visitors per day of the week in 2002.

14

Continents Unknown 64450 51.26% North-America 31462 25.02% Europe 20718 16.47% Asia 6298 5.00% Australia 1617 1.28% South America 995 0.79% Africa 134 0.10% Central America 55 0.04%

Table Va. Visitors by continent in 2000.

Continents Unknown

404237

46.72%

North-America

234739

27.13%

Europe

141389

16.34%

Asia

62975

7.27%

Australia

10921

1.26%

9573

1.10%

Africa

998

0.11%

Central America

359

0.04%

South America

Table Vb. Visitors by continent in 2002.

Continents Unknown North-America Europe Asia Australia South America Africa Central America Total

Daily visits (2000) 477.4 233.1 153.5 46.7 12.0 7.4 1.0 0.4 931.3

Daily visits (2002) 497.2 288.7 173.9 77.5 13.4 11.8 1.2 0.4 1012.6

% share change -8.9% +8.4% -0.8% +45.4% -1.6% +39.2% +10.0% 0% 0%

% absolute change +4.1% +23.9% +13.3% +66.0% +12.1% +60.0% +23.7% +8.4% +8.7%

Table Vc. Comparison of visitors by continent between 2000 and 2002.

15

Domains / Countries 1 - Unknown 42012 33.41% 2 .com US Commercial 22974 18.27% 3 .net Network 21463 17.07% 4 .uk United Kingdom 4238 3.37% 5 .edu US Educational 3856 3.06% 6 .jp Japan 3543 2.81% 7 .es Spain 2569 2.04% 8 .de Germany 2132 1.69% 9 .ca Canada 1766 1.40% 10 .it Italy 1641 1.30% 11 .us United States 1552 1.23% 12 .nl Netherlands 1441 1.14% 13 .fr France 1344 1.06% 14 .au Australia 1303 1.03% 15 .se Sweden 1126 0.89% 16 .at Austria 893 0.71% 17 .mx Mexico 878 0.69% 18 .il Israel 773 0.61% 19 .org Non-Profit Organizations 768 0.61% 20 .be Belgium 682 0.54% 21 .ch Switzerland 676 0.53% 22 .ru Russian Federation 658 0.52% 23 .dk Denmark 586 0.46% 24 .fi Finland 533 0.42% 25 .sg Singapore 499 0.39% 26 .gr Greece 469 0.37% Table VIa. Visitors by top-level Internet domain / country (>0.3% of total) in 2000.

16

Domains / Countries

2222222222222222222222222225111

1-

Unknown

265727

30.70%

2 .com

US Commercial

165244

19.09%

3 .net

Network

131849

15.23%

4 .jp

Japan

49673

5.74%

5 .uk

United Kingdom

28129

3.25%

6 .edu

US Educational

23859

2.75%

7 .es

Spain

18187

2.10%

8 .ca

Canada

15632

1.80%

9 .mx

Mexico

15609

1.80%

10 .us

United States

11364

1.31%

11 .it

Italy

11042

1.27%

12 .fr

France

10892

1.25%

13 .de

Germany

10721

1.23%

14 .nl

Netherlands

9485

1.09%

15 .au

Australia

8244

0.95%

16 .at

Austria

7486

0.86%

17 .be

Belgium

6675

0.77%

18 .se

Sweden

6460

0.74%

19 .org

Non-Profit Organizations

5433

0.62%

20 .ch

Switzerland

4212

0.48%

21 .br

Brazil

3766

0.43%

22 .gr

Greece

3507

0.40%

23 .ru

Russian Federation

3479

0.40%

24 .dk

Denmark

3431

0.39%

25 .pt

Portugal

3416

0.39%

26 .il

Israel

3314

0.38%

27 .ar

Argentina

2770

0.32%

28 .fi

Finland

2713

0.31%

Table VIb. Visitors by top-level Internet domain / country (>0.3% of total) in 2002.

17

Domain

Country

2000 position

2002 Daily visits Daily visits position (2000) (2002)

% share % absolute change change

-

Unknown

1

1

311.2

326.8

-8.1%

+5.0%

.com

US Commercial

2

2

170.2

203.3

+4.5%

+19.4%

.net

Network

3

3

159.0

162.2

-10.8%

+2.0%

.jp

Japan

6

4

26.2

61.1

+104.3%

+132.8%

.uk

United Kingdom

4

5

31.4

34.6

-3.6%

+10.2%

.edu

US Educational

5

6

28.6

29.3

-10.1%

+2.7%

.es

Spain

7

7

19.0

22.4

+2.9%

+17.6%

.ca

Canada

9

8

13.2

19.2

+28.6%

+47.0%

.mx

Mexico

17

9

6.5

19.2

+160.9%

+195.2%

.us

United States

11

10

11.3

14.0

+6.5%

+21.6%

.it

Italy

10

11

12.2

13.6

-2.3%

+11.7%

.fr

France

13

12

10.0

13.4

+17.9%

+34.6%

.de

Germany

8

13

15.8

13.2

-27.2%

-16.5%

.nl

Netherlands

12

14

10.7

11.7

-4.4%

+9.3%

.au

Australia

14

15

9.6

10.1

-7.8%

+5.1%

Table VIc. Comparison of visistors by top-level Internet domain (for top 15 domains) between 2000 and 2002.

18

Browsers MSIE 5 53445 42.50% Netscape 4 33613 26.73% MSIE 4 25479 20.26% Netscape 3 5033 4.00% AOL 4 3535 2.81% MSIE 3 2440 1.94% WebTV 1 1088 0.86% Other 363 0.28% Netscape 2 346 0.27% AOL 3 264 0.20% MSIE 2 57 0.04% ? 25 0.01% Opera 3 13 0.01% AOL-IWENG 3 13 0.01% Netscape 5 7 0.00% Amiga-AWeb 3 4 0.00% AmigaVoyager 2 1 0.00% Opera 2 1 0.00% MacWeb 1 1 0.00% Cyberdog 1 1 0.00%

Summary:

Web browser

Percentage share

MSIE Netscape Other

64.75% 31.01% 4.20%

Table VIIa. Web browsers in 2000.

19

Browsers MSIE 5

531763

64.25%

Netscape 4

122037

14.74%

MSIE 4

65859

7.95%

MSIE 6

64184

7.75%

Netscape 3

20255

2.44%

AOL 4

9230

1.11%

Netscape 6

4411

0.53%

MSIE 3

3231

0.39%

Other

2986

0.36%

WebTV 1

2162

0.26%

AOL 3

606

0.07%

Netscape 2

432

0.05%

MSIE 2

172

0.02%

Opera 5

80

0.00%

Opera 6

71

0.00%

AOL-IWENG 3

26

0.00%

Opera 3

14

0.00%

Amiga-AWeb 3

5

0.00%

Opera 4

3

0.00%

Cyberdog 2

3

0.00%

IBM-WebExplorer

1

0.00%

Cyberdog 1

1

0.00%

Netscape 17.77% - MSIE 80.38% - Other 1.83%

Table VIIb. Web browsers in 2002.

20

Operating Systems Windows 98 58747 46.72% Windows 95 40170 31.94% Windows NT 13217 10.51% Macintosh 8282 6.58% Other 2654 2.11% WebTV 1096 0.87% Windows 3.1 900 0.71% Linux 2 284 0.22% SunOS 5 199 0.15% IRIX 40 0.03% HP-UX 37 0.02% ? 25 0.01% OS/2 24 0.01% OSF1 20 0.01% FreeBSD 14 0.01% AIX 11 0.00% Amiga 6 0.00% SunOS 4 2 0.00% BSD/OS 1 0.00%

Summary:

Operating system

Percentage share

Windows Mac Unix Other

89.90% 6.58% 0.48% 3.00%

Table VIIIa. Operating systems in 2000.

21

Operating Systems Windows 98

470551

57.11%

Windows 95

117416

14.25%

Windows NT

78665

9.54%

Windows 2000

54747

6.64%

Macintosh

51506

6.25%

Windows XP

21828

2.64%

Other

21290

2.58%

WebTV

3260

0.39%

Linux 2

2136

0.25%

Windows 3.1

1119

0.13%

SunOS 5

695

0.08%

Windows ME

144

0.01%

IRIX

129

0.01%

OS/2

105

0.01%

FreeBSD

89

0.01%

HP-UX

76

0.00%

OSF1

46

0.00%

AIX

42

0.00%

Amiga

7

0.00%

DOS

5

0.00%

Acorn

3

0.00%

BSD/OS

3

0.00%

SunOS 4

3

0.00%

Windows 90.36% - Mac 6.25% - Unix 0.39% - Other 2.99%

Table VIIIb. Operating systems in 2002.

22

Screen Resolutions 800x600 66135 55.97% 1024x768 23953 20.27% 640x480 15378 13.01% Other 8932 7.56% 1152x864 1921 1.62% 1280x1024 1600 1.35% 1600x1200 202 0.17% ? 25 0.02%

Table IXa. Screen resolutions in 2000.

6. Screen Resolutions 800x600

502024

57.22%

1024x768

260729

29.71%

640x480

53782

6.13%

Other

20777

2.36%

1280x1024

18744

2.13%

1152x864

18586

2.11%

1600x1200

2652

0.30%

Unique Visitors

Table IXb. Screen resolutions in 2002.

23

Screen Colours 16 Bit (65K) 59144 50.06% 32 Bit (16.7M) 24360 20.62% 8 Bit (256) 13936 11.79% 24 Bit (16.7M) 13048 11.04% Other 7638 6.46%

Table Xa. Screen colours in 2000.

Screen Colours 16 Bit (65K)

407275

52.26%

32 Bit (16.7M)

210856

27.05%

24 Bit (16.7M)

94133

12.07%

8 Bit (256)

56904

7.30%

Other

10092

1.29%

Table Xb. Screen colours in 2002.

24

Referrer Totals: Sources Website 58656 94.31% Search engine 2860 4.59% Hard disk 461 0.74% Email 189 0.30% ? 27 0.04%

Table XIa. Referrer sources in 2000.

Referrer Totals: Sources Website Search engine Hard disk Email Usenet

416278

87.48%

56805

11.93%

2018

0.42%

697

0.14%

11

0.00%

Table XIb. Referrer sources in 2002.

25

Referrer Totals: Search engines MSN Search 1132 29.46% Google 982 25.56% Yahoo 693 18.04% Infoseek 254 6.61% Altavista 134 3.49% Excite 106 2.76% Snap.com 104 2.71% Lycos 76 1.98% WebCrawler 76 1.98% Realnames 62 1.61% Goto.com 49 1.28% Askjeeves 48 1.25% Looksmart 42 1.09% Search.com 29 0.75% Magellan 20 0.52% Galaxy 17 0.44% Mamma 11 0.29% Metacrawler 3 0.08% Inference Find 3 0.08% Euroseek 1 0.03%

Table XIIa. Referrer search engines in 2000.

26

Referrer Totals: Search engines Google

27370

47.28%

MSN Search

13125

22.67%

Yahoo

6026

10.40%

Excite

3952

6.82%

Altavista

3496

6.03%

Goto.com

1285

2.21%

Lycos

1103

1.90%

Askjeeves

626

1.08%

Looksmart

235

0.40%

Snap.com

176

0.30%

Mamma

136

0.23%

WebCrawler

123

0.21%

Infoseek

79

0.13%

Realnames

62

0.10%

Magellan

40

0.06%

Galaxy

36

0.06%

Inference Find

13

0.02%

Fireball.de

3

0.00%

Search.com

2

0.00%

Ilse

1

0.00%

Table XIIb. Referrer search engines in 2002.

27

Engine

Referrals/day Referrals/day % change (2000) (2002)

Google

7.3

33.7

+362%

MSN Search

8.4

16.1

+92%

Yahoo

5.1

7.4

+45%

Excite

0.8

4.9

+519%

Altavista

1.0

4.3

+333%

Goto.com

0.4

1.6

+335%

Lycos

0.6

1.4

+141%

Askjeeves

0.4

0.8

+117%

Table XIIc. Comparison of referrer search engines between 2000 and 2002 (generating more than 1% of search traffic in 2002).

28

All Keywords

All Keywords

567 25.16% museums 241 10.69% virtual 146 6.48% museum 117 5.19% library 92 4.08% art 67 2.97% www.icom.org/vlmp 43 1.90% and 39 1.73% british 39 1.73% www 33 1.46% web 30 1.33% metasearch 29 1.28% the 27 1.19% world 27 1.19% french 24 1.06% vlmp Top keywords generating over 1% of search traffic from a total of 373 Table XIIIa. Keywords used for search in 2000.

22896

32.30%

museums

7420

10.47%

virtual

6209

8.76%

museum

4773

6.73%

art

3504

4.94%

library

2060

2.90%

online

1921

2.71%

web

1345

1.89%

world

950

1.34%

the

846

1.19%

icom

Top keywords generating over 1% of search traffic from a total of 3465

Table XIIIb. Keywords used for search in 2002.

29

All Website Referrers 4014 8.10% http://www.icom.org/ 1940 3.91% http://www.icom.org/vlmp/world.html 1514 3.05% http://archive.comlab.ox.ac.uk/other/museums.html 1413 2.85% [unknown origin] 1333 2.69% http://www.artchive.com/link_res.htm 1152 2.32% http://www.vlib.org/ 936 1.88% http://museoprado.mcu.es/prado/html/enlaces.html 769 1.55% http://vlib.org/Overview.html 748 1.50% bookmarks 706 1.42% http://www.hart.bbk.ac.uk/VirtualLibrary.html 643 1.29% http://www.museums.reading.ac.uk/vmoc/ 632 1.27% http://vlib.org/ Top website referrers generating over 1% of referrer traffic from a total of 1403 Table XIVa. Website referrers in 2000.

All Website Referrers 22393

7.51%

http://www.icom.org/

5049

1.69%

http://museoprado.mcu.es/prado/html/enlaces.html

4821

1.61%

http://www.artchive.com/link_res.htm

4783

1.60%

http://www.icom.org/vlmp/world.html

4693

1.57%

http://vlmp.museophile.com/computing.html

4601

1.54%

http://www.vlib.org/

4186

1.40%

http://vlmp.museophile.com/world.html

4099

1.37%

[unknown origin]

3965

1.33%

http://search.yahoo.co.jp/bin/search

3953

1.32%

http://looksmart.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query

3849

1.29%

http://www.icom.org/vlmp/galleries.html

3843

1.28%

http://www.mcu.es/prado/enlaces_eng.html

3004

1.00%

http://www.laks.com/deutsch/klimtmuseum.html

Top website referrers generating over 1% of referrer traffic from a total of 17915

Table XIVb. Website referrers in 2002.

30

Jonathan Bowen – Short biography Jonathan Bowen is Professor of Computing at South Bank University where he heads the Centre for Applied Formal Methods. From 1995 to March 2000, Bowen was a lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, University of Reading where he led the Formal Methods and Software Engineering Group. Previously he was a senior researcher at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory Programming Research Group where he worked under the guidance of Sir Tony Hoare, FRS. Between 1979 and 1984 he worked at Imperial College, London as a research assistant, latterly in the interdepartmental Wolfson Microprocessor Laboratory. He has been involved with the field of computing in both industry (including Marconi Instruments, Logica and Silicon Graphics Inc.) and academia since 1977. His interests include formal methods, safety-critical systems, the Z notation, provably correct systems, rapid prototyping using logic programming, decompilation, hardware compilation, software/hardware co-design, the history of computing and online museums. He holds an MA degree in Engineering Science from Oxford University. Bowen won the 1994 IEE Charles Babbage Premium award and managed the ESPRIT ProCoS-WG Working Group of 25 European partners (1993-1997) on Provably Correct Systems. He has produced over 150 publications and ten books, and has served on about 25 programme committees. He is the Chairman of the Z User Group and a member of the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM. In 1997, he was Conference Chair of the 10th International Conference of Z Users (ZUM'97, University of Reading, UK), Honorary Chair, workshop presenter and invited speaker at the 1st Museums and the Web Conference (MW97, Los Angeles, USA) and an invited speaker at the 3rd International Conference on Reliability, Quality and Safety of Software-Intensive Systems (ENCRESS'97, Athens, Greece). He was Programme Co-chair of ZUM'98 (Berlin, Germany). In February 1999 he gave invited talks at the Institute of Systems & Information Technologies (ISIT), Kyushu, Japan and was the keynote speaker at the 2nd Joint Workshop on Systems Development, Cheju, Korea. During the summer of 1999 he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology (UNU/IIST), Macau. In September 1999 he was the Publicity Chair of the World Congress on Formal Methods (FM'99, Toulouse, France), attracting over 500 delegates, the largest formal methods conference ever held. He also produced two books in 1999 on High-Integrity System Specification and Design and IndustrialStrength Formal Methods in Practice, both in the Springer-Verlag Formal Approaches to Computing and Information Technology (FACIT) series. During 1999-2000 he guest edited two special issues of the Museum International journal on Museums and the Internet. In the year 2000 he has served on seven programme committees including a special issue on Dependable Computing of the Theoretical Computer Science journal and as a Chair of the ZB2000 International Conference of B and Z Users. He also contributes an Internet column to the magazine New Heritage. He joined the School of Computing, Information Systems and Mathematics (SCISM) at South Bank University, London as Professor of Computing in March 2000. During 2001 he received the Freedom of The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, the 100th Livery Company in the City of London. In 2002, Bowen was elected Chair of the British Computer Society FACS Specialist Group on Formal Aspects of Computing Science and Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

URL: http://www.jpbowen.com/ Jonathan Bowen is Professor of Computing at the School of Computing, Information Systems and Mathematics (SCISM), South Bank University, Borough Road, London SE1 0AA, United Kingdom. Email: [email protected]

31