CIP A 2003 XIX 1 ' 1 International Symposium, 30 September - 04 October, 2003, Antalya, Turkey 
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a common tactic is noticed, when mounting an exhibition and 
presenting it to the public. 
The relationship between the exhibit, the space and the 
commissioner of the exhibition appeared an issue of conflicting 
approaches (Fox 1998), a relationship which recently seems to 
have been redefined on the conceptual level. Nowadays exhibits 
and space must co-exist in a uniform composition, which 
demonstrates the uniqueness of an integrated work. The most 
crucial issue is the importance of the narrative character the 
exhibition should provide in space, at a time when the classic 
narrative plot is considered to be passée, if not superfluous. 
There is a need for a critical approach in organizing an 
exhibition. 
There are multiple reasons for introducing new additional 
elements, at all levels, into the museum and thus redefining its 
role, which make the adoption of Information Technology a 
critical need. Examples of such reasons could be: 
• Operational purposes for the creation of better tour paths 
and the separation of the museum’s functions. 
• Educational purposes for better understanding and 
information sharing; exhibitions should be arranged in such 
a way that the visitor would have both conceptual and 
emotional contact and derive information that he/she will 
refer to in the future 
• Communication purposes. The visitor should be close to the 
ancient artifacts and should experience the excitement of 
the discovery exactly like the excavator did at the moment 
of its finding. 
• Updating purposes. The museum must keep up with the 
developments in all human activities in general (multimedia 
have been introduced in all stages of every day life: i.e. 
education, job, health, public life, entertainment, art, 
communication); for example, for a continuous enrichment 
and updating of the museum material. The creation of 
parallel tour paths in the museum space defines different 
levels of information interpretation. 
A typical example of introducing IT is the extension of the 
museum into the Web. Most of the museums have a Web site. 
Yet, in most cases this “mirrors” the traditional idea about the 
way a museum should be promoted and how the museum uses 
the new technology. Frequently, the Web site takes after the 
paper information leaflets, the maps and the sightseeing guides. 
Obviously there are some bright exceptions to that, where the 
Web site also includes an extension of the exhibition by using 
IT tools. 
Museums have, for a long time, been considered as places that 
objects were kept and protected for conservation, exhibition and 
research purposes. Now they can be transformed into places of 
knowledge, information sharing and interactive communication 
(Spiller et al 1995), and acquire more flexibility. A museum 
should be constructed as a shell to host not one particular 
exhibition but any kind of possible exhibits. The usual “limited 
available space/area” problem can be solved by a combination 
of “real” and “virtual space”. The possibility to have all the 
existing collections in digital form overcomes the necessity of 
keeping all these finds stored in the museum and actually 
changes the ‘space’ with a data base that can be accessed by all 
visitors. Thus the simultaneous exposure of all finds is not all 
that important. Each time different pieces of the collections can 
be presented in relation to other objects of the museum or of 
other museums, which are in digital form, each time making the 
best combination. 
The tour path through the 
museum becomes more 
personal and more dynamic 
and it obtains an educational 
purpose. The visitor should be 
given the possibility to 
experience the enthusiasm of 
excavation by making his/her 
own choices. For this purpose 
virtual reality rooms should be 
planned, where the visitors 
would be able to ‘walk’ through the area as it was before and 
after the excavation. This room then becomes a live cultural 
cell. The visitor is offered a variety of tour paths according to 
his/her questions leading to the answers (Holtzman 1994). A 
stable core for presentations is provided through small 
amphitheatres, computer rooms, digital library and convertible. 
3. RECORDING AND VISUALIZATION TOOLS 
In order to implement the above mentioned “new museum 
concept” it is necessary to use the advanced technological tools 
for geometric recording of monuments and the computer 
graphics in tune with the museum puipose and its development. 
The existence of many archaeological sites all over the Hellenic 
jurisdiction led to the parallel establishment and operation of a 
large number of local archaeological museums, which are 
hosting the artifacts of archaeological excavations. So, in 
Greece, the need for creating virtual museums on the Web is 
less than the need for inventing methods to emphasize and show 
the archaeological site’s importance itself and the need to show 
the progress of the archaeological excavations through the 
visitors’ path in a real museum. 
The overloading of a local and relatively small museum with 
various numerous modem technological tools may have the 
same negative effect as the overexposure of numerous artifacts 
in a traditional museum; it does not help too much the 
information and knowledge sharing. The average visitor may be 
usually a tourist without any particular interest in information 
technology and digital tools. Consequently he/she acts more as 
a passive receiver of optical or audio information and especially 
user-friendly interactive operations. So, we have to propose an 
incremental mode in inserting technological tools to the 
operation of a local museum, such as: 
• Screens with a predefined video projection, which can 
include information like text, photos, images or short 
movies from the excavation operations, etc. 
• High brightness touch screen, located outside or inside the 
museum, with multi media presentation for personal use of 
individuals or for the use of small groups of visitors 
• Spatial Information System for the archaeological site or 
some of its most important parts, which will contain 
historic, archaeological, architectural and technical 
information. It has a set of tools, not only for visualization, 
but also for querying by visitors/users, which would like to 
know more information about the artifacts or some parts of 
the site (Cosmas et al 2001; Ioannidis et al 2002) 
Figure 2. Application of 
cyberspace in exhibitions 
(www.centrifuge.org)