The Virtual Library Museums Pages provide links to several hundred museums of all types on the Internet. The pages reside on the site of the International Council of Museums. The site is now sponsored by this organization, a nonprofit branch of UNESCO, supporting museums throughout the world.
Access is Web‐based and free. Four regularly updated mirror sites are provided, in addition to four less frequently updated mirror sites. The site itself is predominantly text and generally was not unusually slow at the various times this reviewer visited.
Updates
The pages are maintained by Jonathan Bowen (j.p.bowen@reading.ac.uk) According to Mr Bowen, new museums are added to the site every day. In many cases, information is provided by outside contributors. In fact, a template for submissions is included on the site. These entries appear to be loaded directly to the site and suffer occasionally from uneven style or typographical errors: a description for a museum in St Petersburg, Russia suffered from awkward translation into English. Not all the museum sites are updated as frequently as others.
Organization
Links are provided to museums throughout the world. Museums are organized in two ways: by country and by museum type. Type classifications are broad: art museums, natural history museums, children’s art and library museums are the categories provided. There is a section for Virtual Museums: although how this classification is defined is unclear. Most virtual museums also have an actual component in real space. The link to Children’s Museums went directly off the ICOM site to the personal pages of the Bowen family and their children. Credit to the source is not properly acknowledged on the linking page. Within the geographical areas, links are listed alphabetically, with short descriptions of the museum and the site’s creator.
Search engine
Buried in the section on Museums is a link to find museums by keyword: the search engine for this site is fueled by the htgrep.CGI script. The search engine supports keyword and Boolean searching. However, a search performed on toys and Padua did not locate the Wooden Toy museum in Padua which is listed on the site. A search done on Italy retrieved only two sites, where 19 are listed under that country elsewhere on the site. A subject list for browsing is also provided. Some sections have better organization than others. An extensive list of museum contacts was unsupported by alphabetical order.
Scope and content
Self‐described as a comprehensive directory of online museums and museum‐related resources, the site is not quite that. Compared to the American Association of Museums’ Official Museum Directory (print), the VLMP site lists four museums in Arkansas to the listing of 13 Web sites in the Official Museum Directory. On the other hand, browsing the site is fascinating and informative. One afternoon this visitor was in St Petersburg’s Bread Museum, the next day at the Anthropological Museum of Nanzan University. The museum sites themselves, of course, vary greatly in depth, sophistication, content, and design.
Although English is the primary language for the site, many branches of the site are bilingual. Although the scope is by no means comprehensive, 44 Japanese museums had links when visited on November 22. Many of these museum pages are presented in dual languages: Japanese/English; Russian/English, and French/English for Canadian museums. Browser settings may need to be adjusted to accommodate Cyrillic or Japanese scripts.
Overall, this is a site most suitable for browsing. While not comprehensive or consistent enough yet to prove a scholarly resource, the site is a fascinating gateway to the world’s lesser known museums. However, the site is growing rapidly and may become more sophisticated in its organization and look with time.
