Mirror

Funded by the European Union (EU), Mirror was a collaborative project which aimed to research learning strategies and cooperative practices among museum staff and to launch innovative web-based technologies to support and enhance communities of practice and team-work in the area of natural history museum exhibition development. Participants in the project were:

• Syntax, Greece
• uma Information Technology, AG, Austria
• The Visualization Centre, University of Manchester, United Kingdom
• The School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, United Kingdom
• Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Science (National museum of Natural History), Belgium
• National and Capodistrian University of Athens, Greece

Aims and objectives

The School of Museum Studies led the development of the theoretical framework of the project, the methodologies for the research, the field research and the planning and execution of several rounds of evaluation of the Mirror software. The aim was to develop a model of work-based learning in natural history/science museums based upon communities of practice which can then be mirrored using technologies, and to evaluate the effectiveness of these technologies. The project was developed within the Fifth RTD Framework programme of the EU by specialists in museum studies, museum staff, and experts in different and complementary fields of software technology such as management, visualisation and communication.