The Fitzwilliam Museum - University of Cambridge

Information Technology
The Fitzwilliam Museum - Open to the world
Following an extensive period of consultation, re-design and evaluation, the Fitzwilliam
Museum celebrated the launch of its new website in July 2006. The result is a dazzling
introduction to the diverse collections and work of the museum, a virtual museum which
throws opens its doors to the world, making its collections accessible to a myriad of visitors in
new and exciting ways.
The virtual visitor can explore individual objects on
many levels, from basic details to comprehensive
descriptions. They can find information on events and
exhibitions or access the work and collections of the
individual departments. The Education department
promotes a wide range of programmes and provides
learning resources for teachers. Meticulous
consideration to design ensures the website meets
international standards of accessibility for users with
sight impairment.
One of the biggest questions the Fitzwilliam
Museum has to consider is who its virtual visitors are,
and what they expect from a visit. Browsing is an
international pastime. The world is available at the
click of a button, but with this comes certain user
expectations. ‘Visitors’ may happen upon the site or
may search it out; they may hit or visit just once, or
may begin an enduring interest. The user statistics
are phenomenal. In just three years the numbers of
have grown from over 8 million “hits” in 2003, to
over 36 million in 2005, and the figures for the first
half of 2006 already show an increase of over 1
million for the same period in 2005. The conversion
of these ‘hits’ into visits - explorations of several
pages - is high at 10%.
Websites are shop windows to the world, and museums
must compete in the commercial market. The
Fitzwilliam is committed to continued development of
an innovative online visitor experience. Content is
contributed to national initiatives such as the Public
Network Discover Service (PNDS) and international
ones such as MICHAEL. The spirit behind the
endeavour is aligned to the Department for Culture,
Media and Sport’s (DCMS) intentions for the future.
The commitment to making knowledge accessible has
driven the research, planning and delivery behind the
new website.
Operating through the website is a series of
computer-based resources. ‘Pharos’ is the webaccessible
collections information resource where
the visitor can explore a selection of key objects in
the collections through ‘theme’ or ‘time’. There is
also a much larger online catalogue of the
collections. An array of catalogues originally created
over 150 years as the collections grew and were
recorded and researched have been painstakingly
recreated and updated since 1999 to create ADLib,
the unified collections information system which is
accessible through the Online Public Access
Catalogue (OPAC). It has taken the equivalent of 42
person years for staff, supported by project funding,
and working under curatorial supervision to produce
more than 132,000 catalogue entries. Over 46,000
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The redeveloped
website homepage
Information Technology