RAMA (Remote Access to Museum Archives) software permits simultaneous access to documentary multimedia databases of European museums. The challenge awaiting specialists in museums, universities, and cultural institutions when the cost of telecommunication go down, for the general public to access cultural heritage information, will lie in the use of common standards by the museum community. RAM...

The Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s skull of a small tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur (CMNH 7541) collected from the Hell Creek Formation has sparked controversy, with competing hypotheses suggesting that it represents a separate taxon of dwarf tyrannosaurid (Nanotyrannus lancensis), a juvenile specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex (the only other acknowledged Hell Creek tyrannosaurid), or a compr...

A café table is a traditional setting for conversation. Tabletop displays may have an active role in this connection. In particular for a museum scenario, conversation after the visit is important for a joint elaboration of a small group visit experience. We propose the museum café as the location to introduce a tabletop display meant to foster and support conversation about the visit. The goal...

Arthrodires were predatory vertebrates of the Devonian seas, with simple lower jaws conducible to examination of feeding across growth, evolution, and local diversity. 2D finite element analyses (FEA) of arthrodire mandibles (scaled to equivalent length and force, and checked against a 3D control), and a new method of stress integration, enable extensive comparisons of bite stress. FEA indicate...

In line with a tradition dating back two hundred years, the role of The Orsay Museum, like all French museums, is not only to conserve and study the national heritage, but also to act as a centre of education and culture. Though the Orsay Museum may be def ied as a "museum of fine arts", its design and broad range of artistic disciplines have widened the scope of the model inherited from the la...

The good news is that there are at least twice as many software packages available today than there were in 1988, when the first edition of the directory was published, and that the products are, on the whole, considerably improved. The bad news is that a substantial number of vendors, and even more software products, have disappeared. In some cases these vendors or products are confirmed dead,...

T. J. S. Whitfeld ([email protected]), Univ. of Minnesota, Dept of Forest Resources, 115 Green Hall, 1530 Cleveland Ave. N., St Paul, MN 55108 1095, USA. – W. J. Kress and D. L. Erickson, Dept of Botany, MRC-166, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Inst., PO Box 37012, Washington, DC 20013 7012, USA. – G. D. Weiblen, Univ. of Minnesota, Bell Museum of Natural History and Dept of Plan...

We have proposed Meta-Museum as a new knowledge sharing environment where experts and novices can communicate with each other with agent support. Museum exhibitions are thought to be well organized representations of the expert knowledge of curators, but they are just one example of structures of knowledge among many possibilities, given to museum visitors in a one-sided way. Therefore, traditi...

This essay offers an explicit application of the mental spaces and blending framework to account for the dynamic nature of meaning construction in a public art museum. The mental spaces and blending framework show great utility for modelling the use of diverse sign systems in specific social and institutional settings. The objects of inquiry are audio presentations on particular paintings, scul...