• Update
• News
• Webzine
• Overview all issues
• Articles
• Subscription
• Conferences
• Events
• Journals
• News Archive

Webmuseum.dk has been launched in a beta version, which already features an active blog on web design and other related topics, and where visitors can put together their own web design exhibitions. Webmuseum.dk is also a research dissemination project, which should continue to combine research-oriented and user-oriented qualities, says the initiator behind the museum, Associate Research Professor Ida Engholm of the Danish Centre for Design Research.

By Irene Houstrup

In September, Webmuseum.dk opened to provide public access to its extensive online collection of websites; the museum is currently available in a beta version. Through curated exhibitions of websites Webmuseum.dk, which is the world’s first web-based museum, documents the historical development of the graphic World Wide Web. The web museum’s documentation and presentation of the web’s past and present are part of a research project on web history which is carried out under the auspices of the Danish Centre for Design Research.

The Idea Behind Webmuseum.dk

Ida Engholm is an associate research professor at the Danish Centre for Design Research and the initiator of Webmuseum.dk. The launch of the beta-version of Webmuseum.dk in September marks a milestone in Ida Engholm’s research dissemination project on web history, and in the near future the project will be handed over to the Danish Museum of Art & Design, which will be responsible for the museum in the future.

Space Invaders was Denmark’s first authorised education programme for multimedia and web designers. The programme made web design an established profession in Denmark as early as the mid 1990s, long before official web design programmes emerged anywhere else. Source: Webmuseum.dk

The idea for Webmuseum.dk sprang from Ida Engholm’s Ph.D. dissertation on digital design at the IT University of Copenhagen in 2003.
“I was giving courses about web design history at the IT University, but I discovered that there were no texts documenting the historical development of web design,” says Ida Engholm.
“We spend more and more time online, and much of our cultural heritage is anchored in the virtual reality of the World Wide Web. This means that there is a huge need to preserve and document this virtual cultural heritage,” she says.

As part of her web history research Ida Engholm initiated the dissertation project Webmuseum.dk. Following a workshop with members from the design industry about the structure and nature of a future museum for the design history of the World Wide Web, she applied for project funding. In 2005 she began to develop Webmuseum.dk with funding from the Heritage Agency of Denmark. The web museum has also received funding from Danish Centre for Design Research, the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation, the Nordea Danmark foundation, IDG International Data Group and the now defunct Space Invaders.

First Curated Exhibition Goes Online

Today, Webmuseum.dk features hundreds of websites, each selected with an emphasis on their originality with regard to concept, visual graphic expression, functionality and navigation as well as their representational character in reflecting certain social or cultural approaches to web development. The museum’s main focus is on the development of technical and design features in Danish websites, but in the longer term it will also incorporate other perspectives on web history, as the museum expands.

The first curated exhibition in the web museum is the exhibition From Alpha to Beta, which documents web design history from the Internet went graphic until today. The exhibition considers the design aspects of web history and is curated by Ida Engholm.

Long before other public institutions went online, the White House launched a website in October 1994 as part of the Clinton administration and Vice President Al Gore’s emphasis on the use of IT in American society. From the curated exhibition From Alpha to Beta. Source: Webmuseum.dk.

The other curators selecting websites for the collection are Niels Brügger, associate professor of media studies at Aarhus University and Christian Holmsted Olesen, curator at the Danish Museum of Art & Design.

Balancing Research and User Participation

On its front page, Webmuseum.dk invites the visitors to contribute to the documentation of web developments by uploading websites, images and film clips and by creating their own website collections.

Ida Engholm emphasises that user involvement is a crucial element for Webmuseum.dk: “The interactive aspect is essential on the Internet today, and accordingly, it is an integral aspect of the construction of the web museum. I believe it’s important to emphasise the museum aspect of our site by maintaining a strictly focused content and by providing a serious communication framework around the sites in the museum. The museum is not an archive in the same vein as, say, the international Archive.org, which has broad and representative harvesting criteria but which does not contextualise the material; nor is it a showcase for corporate commercials.”

10×10 is an experimental news site, which hourly collects the 100 most frequently used words and images in the world from leading international news sources (Reuters World News, BBC World Edition and the New York Times International News). The data on the website is presented unedited and without comments. The selection is based on an automatic scan of RSS feeds from the news sources. Source: Webmuseum.dk

Ida Engholm explains that the mission of the museum is to create a platform for the documentation and communication of web history and current web developments.
“The challenge lies in creating a constructive interaction and striking a balance between research-oriented and user-oriented considerations, also in the museum’s future existence,” she says.

Becoming an International Web Museum

The development of Webmuseum.dk will be completed over the next few months, and then the material is handed over to the Danish Museum & Art & Design, which will take over the responsibility for running and developing Webmuseum.dk in the future. Ida Engholm is still going to take an active part in the ongoing development as a member of the permanent curators team, and together with the board of the web museum she will help set the course for the future of the web museum.

“In the long term we hope to be able to develop the web museum into an international museum, which also disseminates and facilitates international web history and culture,” says Ida Engholm.

You can visit the web museum online at www.webmuseum.dk.

Mind Design #22, 2009