Digital Lab: Educational formats in and outside the museums  

How do curators digitally present historical holdings in analogue space? What are museums doing to reach a digital audience? These and other questions are the focus of investigation in the joint project museum4punkt0.

Digital spaces enhance the museum experience in the sense of a “visitor journey” – in other words, a journey that begins before ever taking a step into the museum and continues far beyond it. Educational components in digital form serve as building blocks of the museum experience, transporting visitors outside the analogue environment. For example, visitors can interactively view museum objects which normally couldn’t be displayed for conservational reasons. These formats offer digital audiences access to the holdings without them having to visit the museum in person.

Our goals

“Digital Lab” examines the interplay of digital education and museum spaces from two different perspectives. The first part of the project investigates the expectations of digital audiences in order to develop an evaluative tool for digital programmes. The second part aims to develop an AR application for the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek (HAAB) to offer visitors digital access to its historic library collections. Using their smartphones or tablets, visitors will be able to virtually take books off the shelf and peruse them in augmented reality. A 3D application will provide a sense of the materiality of the historic covers. Selected pages and short audio clips will offer insight into the books’ content and highlight the features of individual volumes.