10. Data around cost of investment for the creation of the infrastructure

Data around cost of investments for the creation of the infrastructure needed by a museum to operate fully still needs to be collected as often these financial figures are confidential.

The city of Linz invested a lot in soft and hard ware to build up the cultural infrastructure. This reflects a world wide trend towards broad band accessibilities being most preferred. At the same time, museums tend to realize that they are better off by sticking to conventional means in a digital age by simply showing objects and maintaining them free from any comparative virtual reality. It is not clear how in future these two basic equally very different trends shall play out. Every museum needs to have its website and extension of the collections online. This means there are two kinds of accessibilities often not connected in a way which would reflect a thought through concept. Aside from this virtual museums have become a concept by themselves. They deal more easily with what are collections easily put online such as music, songs, spoken texts, written texts and documents but also simulations of actual objects and buildings. The three dimensionality has been sought to enhance even the preservation of cultural heritage e.g. Karlsruhe and the Boyanna church outside of Sofia, Bulgaria (see HERMES project). But the high costs with little or no ressonance remaining as evidence of success in the long run have made museum directors and others wonder if it is really wise to create a highly sophisticated infrastructure when both its upkeep and upgrading mean rising costs for the museum. The Jewish museum in Berlin has to revamp its multi media infrastructure nearly every five years. The costs in the turn over to new computers and equipment have become a constant factor in the budget and a point of worry due to not knowing how the museums can alter their dependency upon these technical factors in the digital age.

Heidelberg starts broadcast net for new broadband technology WiMAX

Mi Aug 24, 2005 4:15 MESZ

Heidelberg will have as first larger German city wireless accessibilities to the Internet via a broadcast net by using the new technology WIWAX.

Enterprises will have in the city area data connections up to 8 Mega bites per second. This was announced by company German Broadband Services (DBD) with headquarters of the company being in Heidelberg. Further cities should follow by the end of this year, it was announced further. Until now BDB provided services with its accessibility technology in rural regions in which the German Telecom did not offer DSL out of economic or technical reasons.

With WIWAX huge quantities of data can be conveyed at rapid speed over 50 Kilometers via wireless nets. For the installation of a WIWAX connection there is sufficient a small box with integrated broadcast modem which can be linked to a computer. Where there is not possible a direct radio contact, an outer antenna can help.

The world greatest chip producer Intel and the mobile phone company Nokia have announced already in June, that they want to develop the new broadcast technology into a new standard for wireless broadband connections to the Internet. WIWAX adopted chips can be build into portable computers (Notebooks) and also into mobile phones or table computers.

References:

1. Image of a typical infrastructure outline for a museum, see

http://www.um.u-tokyo.ac.jp/publish_db/2000dm2k/english/01/01-09.html

http://de.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=economicsNews&storyID=2005-08-24T141600Z_01_DEO451350_RTRDEOC_0_DEUTSCHLAND-TECHNOLOGIE-WIMAX-20050824.xml

Provisions of new infrastructures in Greece

Socrates Kabouropoulos, Senior Officer, National Book Centre of Greece "Biblionet" Database

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10. Data around cost of investment for the creation of the infrastructure