The Fitwilliam Museum in Cambridge has been piloting a new handheld interactive guide to its collections. Courtesy The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
24 Hour Museum Renaissance Student Journalist, Catherine Rose, gets to grips with the latest high-tech addition to a venerable institution.
Have you ever wanted to know more about a fascinating object in a museum? eGuides are a new and innovative way of enabling visitors to do just that and they’re currently being tested at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
eGuides are hand held computers (Personal Digital Assistants, or PDAs) which come with an ear piece, stylus (to navigate around the PDA) and, most importantly, foolproof instructions! Visitors take them around the museum to get as much or as little information as they want about the artefacts, made possible by an infra-red tagging system.
Testing began in December 2003 and the eGuides will be launched to the public later in 2005. This trial period will enable David Scruton, Documentation and Access Manager at the Fitzwilliam Museum and Project Manager for eGuides, to provide the most user-friendly and informative guides for the public to enhance their enjoyment of the museum.
“The guides are a way to get depth of interpretation into a gallery which hasn’t been possible before,” he said.
The eGuide provides information about artefacts including descriptions and background. Courtesy The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Each PDA has a map of the museum and, using the stylus, the visitor can zoom in on particular galleries. These are numbered and locate the 20 tagged exhibits to help the visitor decide what they want to see. The visitor also has the freedom to stop the eGuide at any point and rather than reading a description of an exhibit then viewing it, the visitor can do both at the same time.
To access the descriptions, you simply direct the eGuide at the tag next to the item, tap the relevant button on the touch screen and a menu comes up with options to choose from.
The guides use a combination of audio, interviews, videos, animation, images and comparisons with other objects in the museum so the descriptions are all unique to each exhibit. “It provides the visitor with an effective way of discovering information about exhibits and stimulates different ways of approaching an object,” David explained.
The guides point out interesting details about artefacts that might not have been noticed otherwise; such as Titian’s signature written on a slipper in his oil painting, Tarquin and Lucretia. Certain items can be looked at closely on the screen and the visitor can also drag across the image.
Visitors have a stylus with which they can navigate through the eGuide. Courtesy The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
The trial period has brought suggestions on how to develop the eGuides. “The evaluation has been really helpful to us”, said David. “We have been able to draw on user experience and adapt the system to make it easier and more intuitive to use.”
When the eGuides are publicly launched, visitors can look forward to brand new PDAs with numbers being increased from nine to 30. The map will be the main point of entry and there will be more content available, with the number of exhibits included being extended to about 50.
The initial phase of the project is part of a wider initiative with At-Bristol, a science, nature and art discovery centre, and the National Space Centre in Leicester. Cambridge-based Hypertag has developed the tags and the ‘Magus Guide’ application used at the Fitzwilliam.
This collaboration has been supported by NESTA, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, the organisation that invests in UK creativity and innovation.
Courtesy The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Proving a hit with the public, the majority of visitors have claimed the guides enhanced their trip: “Made the experience more interesting as commentary and interviews brought exhibits to life,” said one of the visitors.
“We found this a really helpful accessory,” another discovered, finding them very accessible for children too: “My son and daughter each took one, and they found it easy to use, informative and enriching.”
Development of the eGuides will continue, exploring different ways of presenting information for a range of users, including families, visitors with disabilities and foreign visitors.
The eGuides are free to use and available from the main entrance desk where museum staff will explain how to use them.
Catherine Rose is the 24 Hour Museum Renaissance student journalist for the East of England region. Renaissance is the groundbreaking initiative to transform England's regional museums, led by MLA, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.
