Building Digital Museums
By founding of digital museums we can create intentional spaces to exhibit art, photography, and educational materials as something that is presented for people to see and experience rather than consume in a social media feed as a part of a monetized experience designed to ultimately convert time and attention into profit. From that perspective it should be noted that digital museums can be run at extremely low costs, often for free. These galleries are set apart from larger platforms and spaces on the web due to their niche focuses and ability to serve as independent sources of creativity.
A few free options for hosting static sites include:
Additionally, deploying sites in such a way that; (A) they have “source code” that is (B) built and deployed to a destination has a few benefits. One being the improved ability to manage and curate content by generating pages for humans from various sources of housed data. The other benefit is data portability, the museum can be “published” anywhere needed as long as the necessary network topography is present.
Structural Considerations #
Although anyone can build their own digital museum in whatever way they like, a few best practices are listed here.
- Being easy to use, and accessible
- The WebAIM project provides a list of resources that can help with this https://webaim.org/resources/
- Use URL structures:
- That are hierarchal and reasonably organized
- Change infrequently, avoiding “dead links”
Content Ideas #
In general, it can be useful to include a few of these common features within your digital museum:
- Providing a map to exhibits
- Have a clear mission statement
- Feature a list of new exhibits
Beyond this there is no limit to what exhibits can include. Consider virtual experiences, augmented reality, photo galleries, time capsules, or planetariums.
Digital Toolbox: #
- High Quality GIF generator: https://github.com/ImageOptim/gifski