Mobilizing Digital Museums with 3D Photography

Abstract

In order to achieve a higher level of knowledge dissemination, many museums have been digitizing their collections and disseminated them to the world through the Internet. On the other hand, cloud computing and mobile communication technologies will further enhance the penetration capability of digital information, enabling mobile users surfing the wave of information world at anytime and anywhere through mobile devices such as smart phones or tablet PC. Nevertheless, both technologies have their own limitations that may hinder their applicability to the digital museums. We use the National Palace Museum (NPM) as a reference museum for the application of cloud computing and mobile communication technologies to mobilize digital museums. A set of design guidelines specific to the NPM?s services is formulated and a few edutainment systems were implemented based on these guidelines: (1) Qingming Painting and (2) Mao Gong Ding Inscription graphical exhibition systems. A low cost rapid 3D photograph production technology including the Drunk-eye 3D viewing skill that enables a user to view 3D stereograms using naked-eyes as well as a set of script based software tools is also developed to overcome the difficulty of 3D content production to support 3D archiving. With mobilization, the NPM and other museums will be able to lift their world-class services to another level for the benefit of all.