The Western Australian Museum’s new website is now live, giving its world wide audience an vibrant insight into one of Australia’s premier centres of cultural and scientific excellence.
WA Museum chief executive officer Alec Coles said that 13 years ago the Museum had been among the first of the nation’s cultural institutions to develop a website and the new version was a quantum leap in terms of technology and access.
“It revolutionises the way the Museum uses online technologies, including visitor access to online services,” Mr Coles said.
“The Museum is a complex and diverse organisation with six public sites, more than four million objects in its collections and a range of cutting edge research and outreach programs.
“Clearly it is a challenge to deliver an online version that is comprehensive while remaining intuitively easy to navigate.”
The new site makes extensive use of new technologies including blogs, vodcasts, photo galleries and online exhibitions, allowing visitors a more in-depth and interactive experience.
It contains more than 1,000 content sections and will give online audiences an excellent behind-the-scenes view of the Museum’s curatorial and research work.
Mr Coles said that the website also invited people to share their stories on collection objects, allowing everyone the chance to become a curator or historian by contributing to the information held in the collections.
“For example, there would be so many people who have stories about iconic objects such as the yacht Australia II, or family stories about past events and this will be a way for those stories to become part of the State’s history,” he said.
For the first time the Museum will offer an online shop including books, jewellery, gifts, toys and homewares – some of which will reflect visiting exhibitions such as A Day in Pompeii, which is now on show at the WA Museum – Perth.
The website pages providing information on current and future activities and events have been streamlined and include new features to make it easier to see what’s on at the Museum’s sites.
The new Western Australian Museum website can be visited at: www.museum.wa.gov.au.
Media contact: Caroline Lacy on (08) 9212 3860 or 0414 381761
