On-line exhibit design: The sociotechnological impact of building a museum over the World Wide Web

This article examines the sociotechnological impact of introducing collaborative technologies into the Spurlock Museum, a museum of world history and culture at the University of Illinois. It presents the results of a study that focused on the development of advanced information technology to support asynchronous collaboration between curators and exhibit designers planning a new museum facility. It highlights the importance of constructing a virtual museum in which collections management systems are integrated with on-line exhibit information in a dynamic fashion, and presents the methodologies we used to link the Spurlockʹs database systems to the Internet to allow more effective collaboration between those individuals planning the new facility. It includes an analysis of the impact these technological innovations have had on the social infrastructure of the Spurlock Museum, and in particular, on the relationship between the Spurlockʹs curators and exhibit designers.