With the emergence of the World Wide Web, digitalization has also become increasingly important in museums’ public relations. However, professional literature continues to highlight the fact that digitalization of museums has come to a standstill or that its full potential has not (yet) been reached. According to some information specialists, media publications and museum documentation available online are only the initial development stages of what a virtual museum is expected to develop into. This article shows that the reasons for the alleged temporary or permanent “failure” to create a virtual museum should be sought in the nature of museum objects as physical entities and the resulting question of which aspects of museum objects can even be digitized and, first and foremost, whom this type of digital content can then serve and how.
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