Cultural Heritage Presentation in Interactive Digital Media

The advent of interactive digital technologies has provided cultural heritage organisations with an opportunity to utilize these emergent computer technologies to present their cultural resources in new and increasingly innovative ways. At the University of Glasgow, the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in collaboration with the Department of Computing Science have embraced this exciting new challenge and have established a firm bridgehead as pioneers at the leading edge of computer-based cultural heritage information delivery. Under the auspices of Glasgow University's REVELATION project, a major SHEFC (Scottish Higher Education Founding Council) grant-assisted project (£665,000 Sterling) to explore the potential of high-resolution/high-fidelity data transfer over networks, the first field expedition team traveled to Knossos, Crete in 1998 where the entire archaeological site and related nearby locations were digitally photographed and processed in QuickTime Virtual Reality to create a "virtual tour" of the palace of the legendary King Minos. This paper will address the academic, pedagogical, and technical issues raised in the undertaking of such major field projects, and will assess the value of the resulting digital resources to a wide range of end-users with varied expectations and aspirations.