Perspectives on information representation in virtual exhibitions

Abstract

Museum practices have been modified with the inclusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in society. Currently, museums use these tools and digital environments to create virtual exhibitions that can enable broader access to cultural heritage. For this approximation between audiences and the museum to occur, it is necessary to represent these objects in a way that allows the virtual visitor to access and retrieve them. This study proposes an investigation of the representation of information in virtual exhibitions, specifically, to identify if and how the museological institutions have been approaching the representation of information for the design of their virtual exhibitions. For that, the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was used with methodology. It was found that there are studies on information retrieval, semantic description of the content, creation of metadata and expansion of access to information that virtual displays can enable to the virtual public. It is concluded that there are initial researches in the field of Information Science that discuss the information representation process in virtual exhibitions, focusing on the 2000s, however the field still demands more current research considering the leap in the development of digital technologies in last years.