Virtual museum

A virtual museum is an online resource that mimics a physical museum in order to provide visitors with additional levels of customization, interaction, and content depth. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has established museum as an authorised institution, and virtual museums may serve as the digital equivalent of physical museums or operate on their own. Alongside the ICOM goal of preserving cultural artefacts for future generations, the virtual museum is dedicated to making its collections and the information they represent readily available to the general public via open, easy access to their websites.

A virtual museum, like a real one, may be organised according to the kind of exhibits it houses (like an art museum or a natural history museum), or it can be made up of virtual displays based on primary or secondary sources (as, for example in a science museum). Additionally, a virtual museum may be born digital material such as 3D settings, net art, virtual reality, and digital art; or it can refer to mobile or World Wide Web services of conventional museums (e.g., showing digital replicas of its collections or exhibitions). While museums are sometimes brought up in the same breath as libraries and archives, they are conceptually distinct from one another. While the terms "online museum," "hypermuseum," "digital museum," "cybermuseum," and "web museum" all connote electronic delivery, "virtual museum" is more general.