The Virtual Collection of the Musées du Nord-Pas de Calais, Thirty-three French Museums

The web project of the Association of Curators of the Museums of Northern Calais (ACMNPDC) was the first in France to demonstrate the potential of new technologies for information dissemination using the Internet. It was based on common collections management software and the mutual administration of a database of a minimal cataloguing record and image for works of art. The Northern Calais region was chosen in November 1994 as a participant in the European Union IRISI (inter-regional information) initiative which supported efforts to introduce the "information society". In this context , the regional museums association (representing the 33 museums of the region) decided to explore establishing a virtual collection in 1995. As those responsible for documentation of the museums, the curators had previously undertaken an inventory and a photographic campaign to protect and assess the collections of regional museums. In the course of computerizing works of art, twenty of the regions museums participated in the establishment of a public web site. The objective of this US$1.3M project was to create a network of about 50,000 works from all museums - fine arts, cultural and natural history. In order to focus the project, several themes were selected: 15th & 16th century painting on wood Oceanic ethnographic objects old photographic collections French painting of the 17th-19th centuries Dutch and Flemish painting of the 17th century 19th & 20th century French sculpture Each institution acquired the "Micromusée" (MOBYDOC) software for PC's or "M3 Multi Média Muséums" for the Macintosh, except for the modern art museums which used the "Vidéomuseum" system. The works selected were given priority in documentation (according to agreed standards) and photography. A pre-inventory of works to be contributed was prepared. Photo-CD was used for the images and data was interchanged on disk. It rapidly became obvious that most of the problems encountered were organizational rather than technological. They concerned: The role of museums - whether they were necessary to the documentation Working in situ - which was considered essential by curators and conservators Standardization - considered essential from the first, but still not easily achieved on-going evolution - of the content, the technologies and the idea of public access