Information Needs of Art Museum Visitors: Real and Virtual

摘要: Museums and libraries are considered large repositories of human knowledge culture. They have similar missions goals in distributing accumulated to society. Current digitization projects allow both, museums reach a broader audience, share their resources with variety users. While studies information seeking behavior, retrieval systems metadata library science long history; such research museum environments at early experimental stage. There few concerning behavior needs virtual visitors, especially the use images museums' collections available on Web. The current study identifies preferences user groups about specifics exhibits, information, multimedia. users digital or cultural allows examination analysis users' needs, organization including descriptive quantity that may be required. In addition, delineates different categories common: teachers high schools, students colleges universities, professionals, art historians researchers, general public. This also compares informational educational real visitors visitors. Educational based various conducted summarized by Falk Dierking (2000), an evaluation websites previously support study.