1. Establishing Meaningful Services
over the Cloud for Museums
Giannis Stoitsis, Kostas Stratis
Greek Research and Technology Network

2. Museums hold a wealth of high quality
content

3. which can be used to support education

4. but to preserve, curate and educate
we need

5. even when machinery exists there are
problems
• hardware maintenance
• technical support
• interoperability limitations
– no APIs for the dissemination of collections
• hardware costs

6. the cloud approach
Teachers
Parents
Pupils

7. the cloud approach
Teachers
Parents
Pupils

8. Virtualized Infrastractures Management Layer
Virtualization of Infrastructure Layer
GUI tools and APIs
Virtual Machines
Cloud provider A Cloud provider B Cloud provider B
Virtualization of Infrastructure Layer
Storage and Processing Monitoring/Management/Allocation layer

9. what can be hosted on the cloud
• Collections management tools
– APIs for content dissemination in large networks
• Educational tools
• Educational portals for museums based on
their digital collections
• Metadata aggregation infra

10. what museums need to have
… only a browser and internet connection

11. CASE 1: EDUCATIONAL TOOL OVER
THE CLOUD

12. Educational Pathway Authoring Tool

13. Educational Pathway Authoring Tool

14. Cloud service workflow

15. how it works
Demo

16. comparing costs for hosting educational
tool at museum and cloud
Cloud Hosting at museum
• cloud hosting = 20 euros/month • 1 server+monitor+ups = 1200 euros
• set up effort = 1hr • set up > 1 day effort or 100 euros
• back up included • hardware maintenance effort =
difficult to be defined but significant
• Total for 5 years = 1200 euros • Total for 5 years = 1300 +personnel
for hardware maintenance+ costs of
unexpected HW breakdowns e.g.
supplier, hard disk
Costs of software support After 5 years the HW
could be the same for both should be
cases renewed/upgraded

17. CASE 2: SETTING UP EDUCATIONAL
PORTAL OVER THE CLOUD

18. Educational portal for Natural History
Museum of Crete
Demo

19. how it works
Museum
Template customization
html, css, Ajax, JS
Search API Search API
Metadata aggregator for Cultural Content Metadata aggregator for Educational Content
Cloud
Collection Management Tools of Museums Edu tool of Edu Tool of Edu tool of
NHMC Museum B Museum C

20. how it works
widget in Facebook page of
Template customization
museum
html, css, Ajax, JS
Search API Search API
Metadata aggregator for Cultural Content Metadata aggregator for Educational Content
Cloud
Collection Management Tools of Museums Edu tool of Edu Tool of Edu tool of
NHMC Museum B Museum C

21. More info
• prototyping
– www.greenlearningnetwork.org/nhmc/
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kdc55xju0g4
• info points
– stoitsis@ieee.org
– www.natural-europe.eu
Thank you