Smart Museum

Abstract

The chapter presents the authors' study on the smart museum concept. Semantic Web technology and ontology modeling methods are applied to construct advanced digital services, supporting the study and evolution of museum collections. The concept aims at significant increase of the information impact of museum exhibits by providing augmented annotations, identifying semantic relations, assisting the visitors to follow individual trajectories in exposition study, finding relevant information, opening the collection to knowledge from visitors. A museum collection is advanced to a knowledge base where new information is created and evolved by museum visitors and personnel. The chapter discusses reference information assistance services, which are oriented for use as mobile applications on users' smartphones. The proof-of-the-concept case study is the History Museum of Petrozavodsk State University. The pilot implementation demonstrates the feasibility of the smart museum concept in respect to the user mobility, service personalization, and collaborative work opportunity.