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LeMO: A Virtual Exhibition of 20th Century German History

Lutz Nentwig

Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering ISST, Berlin

in cooperation with:

German Historical Museum, BerlinHaus der Geschichte of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn

LeMO was funded by DFN-Society / Deutsche Telekom Berkom GmbH

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Contents

• Introduction

• Structuring content and access: VRML, HTML, search engine

• Architecture, Implementation

• Results

• Outlook

• Conclusion

• Demonstration

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Introduction

Virtual exhibition of 20th century German history for the Internet / B-WiN

Content:

• Film and sound material

• Image material (photos, paintings, graphics etc.)

• Printed material (books, newspapers, posters etc.)

• Period objects (vehicles, clothing, furniture etc.)

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Structuring Content and Access

20th century divided into 9 periods

Wilhelmine Germany (1900-1914), World War One (1914-1918), Weimar Republic (1918-1933), National Socialism (1933-1939), World War Two and the Holocaust (1939-1945), Post War Years (1945-1949), Divided Germany (1949-1989), German Unity (1989/1990), Approaches to the Present (since 1990)

Access: 3D (VRML) worlds, HTML, search engine

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3D Environments

VRML worlds for every period

Information environments

Atmospheric environments

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Examples VRML worlds

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HTML

Content:

• Text, photos of historical items, film and sound recordings

Links:

• topics in-depth, biographies, chronicles, period before, after, navigation page

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Example HTML

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Search Engine

Based on metadata

Search dimensions:

• place, time, keywords (e.g. persons), topics (politics, economy, culture etc.), data formats (VRML, HTML, jpg, video, audio etc.), objects (posters, sculptures, paintings, artifacts etc.)

Graphical interface

Archive

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Implementation

Use of Internet technologies

Integration of

• VRML, HTML, JavaScript, Java

• Streaming Video / Streaming Audio

Search engine: MeBro

High- / Low-End-Version

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Architecture

Browser Pug-In Applets

VRML HTML Java Video/Audio

WWW MetaDatabase

VideoAudio

HTTP StreamingProtocol

IP Protocols

B-WiN / Internet

Client

Server

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Results

31 VRML environments, over 4000 multimedia HTML pages including over 1000 texts on specific periods, themes or overviews, over 2500 images, over 700 biographies, 99 chronicles, over 260 videos /audio files

Full text search engine, limited extent via an archive

Pilot project:

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VRML worlds: up to 5 Mbyte, videos: up to 300 Kbit/s

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Multimedia PC , 2 Mbit/s Internet connection

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Outlook

LeMO+

• Metadata based search engine

• Guided tours

• Collective memory

• Use in schools

LeMO+ is funded by DFN-Society / BMBF.

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Conclusion

Experiencing history using a new medium

Available to everyone worldwide, but only in one place worldwide: the Internet

www.dhm.de/lemowww.hdg.de/lemowww.isst.fhg.de/~lemo