Ingenious - all about British science and technology, but it's placed in a social context
People across the world can now see over 30,000 objects from the collections of the Science Museum, National Museum of Photography, Film & Television and National Railway Museum online for the first time.
Two distinctly different websites were launched at London's Dana Centre, part of the Science Museum on June 9. Lindsay Sharp, Director of National Museums of Science and Industry, welcomed the online resources, www.ingenious.org.uk and www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk
"Until now, only around seven per cent, at best, of the Science Museum's vast collection has been accessible to the public," said Mr Sharp. "The new sites give us the chance to give people a bigger taste of the remarkable richness and depth of objects in our collections."
Making The Modern World - a new rich media e-learning resource
Through the digitisation and collation of objects, images and records, the new sites provide a unique window into the three museums, which together form the National Museum of Science & Industry (NMSI).
While Ingenious browses online science collections in an open, accessible way, Making The Modern World is a more radical digital museum project, with over 80 animated rich media web trails. "It's about creating an individual learning path for visitors on the site," said Lindsay Sharp.
"If you add interactive visits, it's carrying the message (about British science and engineering invention) to tens of millions of people worldwide."
Created with £1.4 million of funding from the Government’s Invest to Save Budget and the Cabinet Office, the site offers unprecedented insight into the stories behind objects from rockets to radios, locomotives to lasers and cameras to computers.
Ingenious has a forum where readers can interact and have their say about big issues of the day
www.ingenious.org.uk is home to over 30,000 images exploring science, contemporary culture and the feats of human ingenuity that shape our lives.
The site was made possible thanks to a grant of over £1million from the Big Lottery Fund, formerly the New Opportunities Fund.
From stories and opinion pieces to interactive debate, the site is aimed at providing connections between people, innovations and ideas inspired by the three museums’ collections.
As well as exploring contemporary issues such as GM foods, the site forum asks provocative questions like this: should the State pay to make ugly people beautiful?
www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk is based on the Science Museum’s landmark gallery of the same name and gives visitors a new way to explore the icons of invention.
It uses animation, dramatic reconstructions and technical explanations to encourage browsers to find out more about the social implications of historical advances in science and technology.
Making The Modern World will stretch your web connection to the limit if you're on a modem - it's best seen on broadband
Focusing on over 100 iconic objects, from Stephenson's locomotive Rocket to the Apollo 10 moon craft, the site also presents teachers and students with learning modules to complement the A level curriculum.
"We were trying to explore web publishing, in a sense," said Andrew Nahum, of the Science Museum. "Is it possible," asked Nahum, "to publish a coherent site that encourages really substantial web visits, as opposed to fleeting ones?"
Winchester-based museum consultancy MWR provided project management for Making The Modern World.
"The site contains over 3,000 images, at least 400 objects from everyday life, more than 225 biographies, over 100 icons from the Science Museum’s Making the Modern World gallery and better than 500 hours of learning time," said Dr. Andrew Sawyer, Education and Museum specialist at MWR.
"As well as 19 learning modules with over 150 interactive activities, 25 stories with over 80 rich media and 120 text and image scenes, eight guided tours and nine multimedia personal accounts."
Hang on - he hasn't finished yet! "A Level curriculum subjects covered include general studies, history, physics, chemistry, psychology, geography, sociology, maths, biology, design and English."
The sites are the first of several projects to emerge from a web programme being developed by the National Museum of Science & Industry (NMSI).
