Interactive technical history exhibition in the Central Museum of Mining

How does it work? – This is the title of the interactive exhibition, showcase and activity area that has been opened in the Central Museum of Mining of Sopron by the contribution of the Foundation for Information Society. The museum was awarded a support of nearly 50 million HUF for the entire development of the museum in the framework of the TIOP call  (TIOP-1.2.2-11/1-2012-0050).

In the establishment of the two special elements of the Showcase: the digital stock catalogue and coin display, the Foundation for Information society has got an outstanding role. The digital stock catalogue is the digital record of the museum’s collection where not only objects but historical photos and maps can be searched on a touch screen by the visitors. The digital coin display presents the most valuable pieces of the museum’s numismatic collection, provided with scientific descriptions and magnified coin pictures. Both systems are barrier-free: there is a text-to-speech program for the blind and visually impaired and a magnifying view also helps their information provision.

The automated exhibition guide operating in the Showcase can also be connected to the Foundation: it is an installation assisting cultural-historical background materials making the interrelations explicit for the exhibits in a way that the attention of the visitors is drawn on the presented tool and parallelly, there is a video presentation of materials that used to be accessible only for researchers until now. This is supported by a special system characterised by the sounding presentation, the projected materials (animation, video) as well as the demonstrations, operating machines etc. to be watched time-synchronised, so that the knowledge provided with the additional multimedia contents can be acquired more simply and efficiently.

A QR code controlled exhibition guide is also established: Descriptions to each exhibits are available by the capturing of QR codes, including further pictures and sounding materials which can be accessed by all visitors with the help of their smart phone.

Another element of the project is a newly created community area for presentations, film projections and museum pedagogical workshops in the museum where more expressive and interactive programs can be carried out due to the multimedia equipment procured in the framework of the project.

The information provision for the visitors is implemented by an interactive information board where the most important data can be found and – with the help of a sounding map – the facts of each exhibition can also be retrieved.