Future

So, what's next for museums? Since 2005, the Rijksmuseum has been working on a project to personalize the museum experience based on semantic Web technology so that visitors can access collections in a more meaningful way. They are currently using the CHIP demonstrator, "a museum artifacts recommender system and environment for building personalized museum tours" (Aroyo). After signing up, users are presented with various items from the collection and asked to rate them ("I hate it, I do not like it, It's OK, I like it, I like it very much"). They are also able to rate the piece based on other criteria such as creation site, material medium, and themes. The demonstrator then recommends artwork based on the user's preferences. This interactive dialogue quiz helps users find what interests them in the collection. With the demonstrator the Rijksmuseum hopes to achieve complementary integration of the web with a guided experience within the physical museum to motivate regular visits to both spaces and ultimately allow active engagement of users with artwork.