Interactive Narrative and Integrated Applications in a Museum

Abstract

From collections management to kiosk information systems to the Web, managing all aspects of data quality, work-flow and varied publishing processes presents a challenge to museums that want to share their rich visual documentation with a general audience. Open-architected applications and a good understanding of audience go a long way toward meeting this challenge and at the Getty have helped create the critical infrastructure that supports the delivery of non-linear, interactive narratives for a general audience. The Getty Museum’s ArtAccess, created in 1996–1997, is one response to this challenge. The back-office work of authoring and content creation is anchored in standards-based data shared by many museum applications. The front-end presentation through the user interface transforms the experience of reading data into an experience that seamlessly integrates high quality audio and video with the usual images and text in manner that responds to our audiences’ needs to receive and create engaging stories based in the museum collections.