Creating a Winning Online Exhibition: A Guide for Libraries, Archives, and Museums (review)

Online exhibitions provide unique opportunities for institutions to promote collections, to recognize donors, and to further their educational objectives. This comprehensive guide to creating online exhibitions of library, archives, and museum collections addresses the challenges inherent in the design, creation, and execution of successful presentations. The increasing popularity and number of online exhibitions, and the continually evolving technological possibilities require information professionals to cultivate a wide range of organizational, curatorial, educational, and technical skills. From proposal design to the selection of exhibition materials, from textual descriptions to user interface design, this guide offers a useful overview of the digital exhibition development process. Author Martin Kalfatovic is Digital Projects Librarian at Smithsonian Institution Libraries and adjunct faculty member at the Catholic University School of Library and Information Science.

Overall, the book is well organized, with chapters devoted to the definition of a virtual exhibit, the conceptualization of an exhibit theme, the execution of the exhibition, the myriad technical considerations involved in the design process, aesthetic and technical design factors, a retinue of case studies and examples, and several appendices—all of which offer insightful techniques and relevant examples. Anyone who believes a virtual exhibit consists of simply mounting a series of digital images alongside some related text will be surprised. The creation of a substantive digital exhibit requires planning comparable to that of a three-dimensional exhibit, with an additional wealth of technical considerations.

Author Kalfatovic contextualizes the digital exhibition development process within the traditional exhibition procedures of libraries, archives and museums, recommending that the digital development process follow the usual path of exhibition proposal, selection and preparation of objects, and exhibition scripting. For the larger institution with well-established exhibition development procedures, his discussion of exhibition policy and proposal guidelines and the chapter devoted to staff will not be particularly illuminating. However, smaller institutions or those unfamiliar with mounting physical or digital exhibitions will find these sections helpful in establishing procedural guidelines.

The transitory nature of computer technology makes timely documentation of current trends nearly impossible, especially in print-based formats. That said, Kalfatovic provides an excellent wide-ranging summary of technological choices for digital exhibition development. Digitizing methods, scanning procedures, markup languages and style sheets, CGI scripting, JavaScript, databases, and accessibility issues are discussed in non-technical language designed to introduce these tools and concepts to the uninitiated. The three chapters on technical issues provide an insightful introduction for information professionals seeking a basic understanding of current technologies.

Following the chapters on technical issues, a chapter of the book is devoted to the aesthetic design of digital exhibitions, and the technological limitations imposed on the design process. Again, Kalfatovic provides an excellent overview of the technological issues that affect the design process, as well as basic, but sound, design principles for digital exhibitions and other web-based materials. The chapter suffers, however, from a lack of current scholarship—in the last few years, much has been written regarding user-centered design and the importance of usability testing in developing digital materials. The inclusion of these concepts would have provided information professionals with the latest conceptual framework for the digital design process.

The text of the book is enhanced by numerous illustrations and screen captures. Despite the limitations of black and white reproduction, these images combine with a chapter on online exhibition case studies and an extensive bibliography of exhibitions to provide the reader with a wide sample of current online exhibition designs. Including the URL in the image caption or associated text, rather than placing it at the end of the chapter or in the Appendix would have facilitated easier use of the book. However, the physical dimensions and design of the book are most helpful. The wide margins and topical headings that appear within these...