Open Exhibits targets museums with free software for online exhibition – resource alert

FREE SOFTWARE MUSEUMS ONLINE RESOURCES

Open Exhibits is a new software initiative that allows people to plan and develop their own online exhibits. It is free to download for anyone who is involved in formal or informal education, including museums, researchers, students and universities.

A view of the Collection Viewer template available for download on the Open Exhibits website. Image taken from openexhibits.org.

Here’s what Open Exhibits have to say about their software:

Open Exhibits is a suite of open source multitouch-enabled exhibit modules and templates with the goal of transforming the way in which museum professionals and other informal educators assemble interactive computer-based exhibits for use in museums and on the Web.

The Open Exhibits core software includes support for multitouch gestures within Adobe Flash and Flex. This software is free for museums, universities, students, and other educational organisations.

Available for Mac OSX, Windows and Linux, the free software is called Open Exhibits Core and is available for download from the Open Exhibits website. There is also a purchasable version available to commercial entities called GestureWorks.

A visual example of how the Open Exhibits modules, templates and exhibits interact with each other and user content. Image taken from openexhibits.org.

Once the software has been downloaded, users can access “modules” and “templates” to help them build their “exhibit”. Modules are designed for people with prior knowledge of web design and Flash and can be used to build templates. Less experienced users can start from an already built template and just insert their content. There is currently one template and seven modules available online for download. We think it would also be great to have access to user-designed templates and modules but that doesn’t seem to exist at the moment.

There is a lot of support available on the site from tutorials and manuals to a “gesture library” and industry research findings.

Open Exhibits are also running a partner museum project that could be worth following. They will develop six exhibits with three museums over the next three years, of which the source code and content will be made available to other software users. The museums are likely to develop a version of the Collection Viewer template. Most interestingly for art museums,

Both the Natural History Museum and the Maxwell [Museum] have extensive permanent collections, so the Collection Viewer will allow them to display artifacts and fossils that wouldn’t otherwise be seen by visitors.

Members from the Open Exhibits partner musuems project gather for a meeting. Image taken from opensource.org.

KK/KN

Related Topics: research, resources, galleries work the Web

Related Posts:

• 140 not enough: Powerhouse favours Facebook over Twitter in social media experiment – November 2010 – how the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney utilises social media for curators and audiences to interact
• Trans Artists facilitates international art connection through residencies – artist resource – November 2010 – learn more about this internationally accessible centre for artist-in-residence schemes
• Fad or innovation? First ever entirely online art fair to launch next year – September 2010 – we post the press release announcing this soon-to-occur and somewhat experimental art fair
• Blog provides ground view of Chinese contemporary art – interview Katherine Don – September 2010 – we interview the co-founder of RedBox Review
• Discover new artists and keep abreast of shows with artinasia.com – website review – March 2010 – Art Radar highlights for you the Hong Kong-based site which offers a comprehensive directory of Asian artists, galleries and shows

Subscribe to Art Radar for more on new art administration resources