CHAPTER ONE
1.1BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Digital museums appeared in the Internet many years ago. First digital museums
have emerged since 1991. However, despite the identity and quality of
exhibitions their exhibits are comparable with traditional art museum
publications albums, catalogues and books, while the Internet can create a
qualitatively new displays, where previously impossible or inconsistent methods
of display historical and artistic heritage have been set up. What is the identity
of the museum, in which you enter? The main feature is that here are
collections, which actually stored in different museums in different countries or
even on different continents or does not exist at all.
1.2 What is a digital museum?
The first definition of what a digital museum is, was simply the website of a
physical museum. A concept of a museum “without walls” had, however, been
introduced as early as 1953 by Malraux, who imagined it being an environment
for the presentation of mainly photography and art. The term Digital museum
was first coined by Tsichritzis and Gibbs in their article Digital museums and
digital realities referring to a museum constructed for a digital landscape and
functioning as a service rather then a location.
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Another early idea of the digital museum was the VR digital museum that
was a copy of the physical museum in its architecture, and it generally
contained 2D and 3D images of items from the museum’s collections. The
digital museum later evolved to refer to web sites of museums that contained
different types of media (multimedia) to present information, such as images,
text, sound etc.22 This is still partly the case, but a digital museum is today
considered to hold a larger complexity then just different types of mediapresented information on a site. The digital museums have become a matter of
not just basic information, but also of how the information is being presented to
the users.
1.3 Definitions of a digital museum
The definition and idea of the digital museum is still under construction. Just as
with the technology, the idea and definition is under constant change, and what
once might have qualified as a digital museum in its encyclopedic definition,
may not do so today.
Today the definition of the digital museum is coming closer to that of what a
physical museum is. It is no longer only a website with information presented.
1.4STATEMENTS OF THE PROBLEM
Museums are physical locations which cannot be accessed without a visit to
these physical locations. Museums contain artefacts of cultural heritage
and history which people need to have access to reinforce a sense of history
and cultural identity. People cannot have access to museum that is hundred
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of kilometres from them. Existing physical museum even when they are
close, are normally so fully booked that people cannot have access to them
unless they book months in advance. This study is focused on finding a
solution to these problems where people can have access to the museum
even when the physical artefacts are far away.
1.5PURPOSE OF STUDY
The purpose of this study is to thoroughly check the viability of the idea of
the digital museum. And to see to what extent that a physical museum can
be represented by a digital museum which is accessible online
1.6SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The internet and the World Wide Web have brought huge advances in how
the world interconnects with one another. This digital museum is going to
help us in our interactions with each other and one another. People from
distant countries will be able to visit the digital museum to learn more about
Nigeria.
1.7OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
This project has the following objectives
1. To make artefacts of cultural and colonial history available to all
thorough the internet and world wide web as a medium
2. To increase historical and cultural awareness in the general populace.
3. To make remote and distant museum contents accessible to all.
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4. To reduce the cost of preservation of historical heritage by adopting
online archiving and story of historical detail
1.8SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This work is limited to the concept of the digital museums of Nigeria as it
related to the general colonial history of Nigeria. The digital museum is not of
the specialist kind like the war museum. Its scope is Nigerian history
particularly its colonial history. It does not cover every city in Nigeria it is
limited to the a few major cities like Lagos and Enugu.
1.9LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
This research work was faced with a lot of difficulties. Time constraint was one
of the limiting factors in carrying out this study.
Financial constraint also constituted in carrying out an in depth study of this
project. Limitations to the extent in which data could be collected also
constituted a problem. Irregularities in power supply also dealt harshly with the
researcher. Collection of photographs from the archives was particularly
difficult as seeing the chief archivist in the museums visited was almost close to
impossible. This resulted to huge dependence on internet images which is
notoriously known to be doctored and unreliable.
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In spite of the above mentioned difficulties, some data was collected which will
be analysed later.
1.10 ASSUMPTION OF THE STUDY
While researching on this work, i came up with a couple of assumptions which
include:
1. I would be able to finish this work before deadline
2. In the long run, this research work would be accessed globally.
1.11 DEFINITION OF TERMS/ VARIABLE
DHTML – Dynamic Hypertext Mark-up Language. it is a combination of
HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript and Macromedia Flash Mx used to
create animated and interactive websites.
HTML – Hypertext Mark-up Language is a client-side scripting language for
Website design.
PHP – (Archaic: Personal Home page) Hypertext Preprocessor. These
languages work closely with the Web server to interpret the requests made from
the World Wide Web, process these requests, interact with other programs on
the server to fulfil the requests, and then indicate to the Web server exactly what
to serve to the client’s browser.
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SQL – Structured Query Language, basically used in querying the databases to
retrieve, updates, and review database
CSS – Cascading Style Sheet. A client-side scripting language, used in styling
the webpages for a greater user-experience.
ASP – Active Server Pages. A server-side scripting language like the PHP.
These languages work closely with the Web server to interpret the requests
made from the World Wide Web, process these requests, interact with other
programs on the server to fulfil the requests, and then indicate to the Web server
exactly what to serve to the client’s browser.
SERVER – A specific application, called a Web server, will be responsible for
communicating with the browser.
PHOTOSHOP – Graphics applications
WEBSITE – A website is a collection of information about a particular topic or
subject
APACHE – A server technology, designed to assist the webmaster in utilizing
database and Server technology.
UNIX- an operating system
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