Detailed virtual tours are now available for some of Australia’s greatest cultural institutions. Their aim is to educate and inspire new generations. The initiative of bringing Australian museums and galleries online belogs to Google Street View.

Google Street View has taken theStreet View technology to new possibilities and tried to capture a 360-degree panoramic image of some of Australia’s galleries and museums in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.

Google Cultural Institute – is making an effort to provide important cultural material and to make it available and accessible to everyone,in a new eniroment, for the years to come.

The technology was previously used for showing the natural beauty of the Grand Canyon, and some of the world’s cultural institutions, like the Musee d’Orsay in Paris or the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

Veril Sjarif, Google’s marketing coordinator explained how this was made possible. A special backpack with 15 cameras took a panoramic image every three to five metres. Yhe images were then used to capture the visit in the museum.

“It is just like a street view imagery, butfor the indoors, so it will still have the navigational arrows and all that to go through the museum, so it will do everything a virtual tour does,” Mr Sjarif claims.

Australian Museums And Galleries Online

The Queensland Museum was one of 14 Australian institutions approached by the Google Cultural Institute. It is anew approach that is trying to stay relevant with the latest technology.

What the viewer can see physically on the floor is just the tip of the iceberg – more like the tip of the tip of the iceberg, since the museum shows about 15 milion objects, within its exhibitions.

Virtual visitors can get close to artefacts, items, scientific specimens and drill down toget as much information as you need from theobjects – therefore the experience is a very personal and interactive one, more like you are creating your own tour.

With about 1 million people attending annually, the museum now expects many millions more to see its collection online.

As the museums officials claim, “the more you put online the more we find people want to connect with the real thing, so putting more out there online tends to drive visitation and we’re certainly seeing that” .

Other museums enrolled in the program are the National Museum of Australia and the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.