Evaluating Virtual Museums:

The Communication Challenge in Archaeological Museums in Puglia: Insights into the Contribution of Social Media and ICTs to Small-Scale Institutions

“…It must be observed that such consistence has undergone rapid growth between the end of the 1960s and the end of the 1980s; [126] highlighted how, whilst in 1980 the number of Italian municipalities hosting at least one museum (809) has little more than triplicated compared to the census of 1922 (253), the corresponding number for Puglia has more than quintuplicated, from 8 in 1922 to 45 in 1980, and the total number of regional museums has quadruplicated. Those data are in line with the statements from [6] about the evolution that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. Jalla defines the region of Puglia as "a reality that, for museum-related issues, is continuously in progress" [126].…”

“…A whole vein of explorative research studies, actually, has been developed on the potentialities of those technologies and their role in museum communication, especially in the reconstruction of objects, people, and complete environments [45][46][47], mainly for on-site use to enrich the visit experience and add precious informative content about objects, their original context and use, or generally, their stories [48], up to hypothesizing and applying the concept of a virtual museum in its complex [49,50]. From this point of view, the perceived potential of this concept has led to meditations above all on definitions and possible classifications with respect to different levels of complexity and interactivity [6,51,52], although the first efforts to apply the concept date back several years [53].…”

“…A shift occurs, on the one hand, towards a bidirectional communication between the museum and its audience and, on the other hand, towards the measurement of effects [67,68] and the causal relations between digital strategies and intentions of physical visits [69][70][71][72][73], within a general "public-oriented" or "user-oriented" approach. This is due to the new social values attached to museums [6,[74][75][76] and their growing and visible openness, which begin to leave space for values' and meanings' creation on the part of communities and a search for encounters. In this picture, those same communication technologies used before mainly to inform on events and initiatives and to transmit content to passive receivers are now employed to know the audiences for the twofold purpose of proposing cultural experiences closer to their interests and receiving their suggestions and values.…”

“…This process has been developing in parallel with a progressive evolution affecting their deepest essence, related to a rethinking of the role and significance of the museum institution, that has gone on to enrich its functions for decades-with respect to the original ones of conservation and exhibition of objects-through a growing openness towards a more and more informed, interested, and exigent audience and towards its contributions. Such evolution has also been widely analyzed [6][7][8][9] and, on the other hand, was already reflected in the ICOM definition of museum in 2007 [10].…”

“…In Europe, in particular, the economic crisis of the period 2009-2013 and the gradual diminishing of EU financial support to institutions have put further stress on the sector in all countries. This has not caused, anyway, a reduction in visit flows, but on the contrary, an increase, in particular in the segment of archaeological museums, probably due to the need for stability typically felt in critical periods and to the identification of a reference element in the communities' past [6], as well as in front of the rapidity of social and technological changes, often higher than the human ability to adapt to them [6,17,18]. Such a transition has always been much heavier and more difficult in small-dimension museums, which, besides being generally less equipped, account for the majority of a cultural heritage that is extremely diffused across the whole European territory.…”