The National Portal and Digital Repository for Museums of India is designed and developed by Human-Centred Design and Computing Group, C-DAC, Pune. It provides an integrated access to theme based collections and artefacts from various national museums, irrespective of their physical and geographical locations in India. The portal introduces India’s rich heritage through a diverse range of digital collections in terms of sculptures, paintings, manuscripts, weapons, coins and a numerous other categories of artefacts. This national virtual museum is a wealth of knowledge accessible from anywhere and at anytime for students, teachers, researchers and even the tourists. It is perhaps for the first time in the world that 10 national museums are made accessible online from one portal. The participating museums are listed as under-
- National Museum, New Delhi, India
- Allahabad Museum, Allahabad, India
- Indian Museum, Kolkata, India
- National Gallery of Modern Arts (NGMA), New Delhi, India
- National Gallery of Modern Arts (NGMA), Mumbai, India
- National Gallery of Modern Arts (NGMA), Bengaluru, India
- Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) Museum, Goa, India
- Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) Museum, Nagarjunakonda, India
- Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad, India
- Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata, India
The salient features of the portal are as under-
- Search and retrieval across all museums
- Automatic keyword suggestions
- Parameter based filtering of search results
- Object metadata with zoom-in/out for images
- Direct access to digital collections
- Creation of virtual galleries
- Automatic time-line mapping of objects
- Separate homepages for museums
- Museum-wise event announcements
- Portal Administration
- Scalable framework of virtual museums
The portal is growing by information on approx. 5000 objects every month which is integrated and deposited using JATAN: Virtual Museum software deployed in each museum. This information is then archived using Sanskriti Digitālaya, an Open Archival Information System for producing the centralized database and digital repository of museums. JATAN: Virtual Museum Builder and Sanskriti Digitālaya are both designed and developed by our team, which are responsible for making the 10 national museums online from single portal. It is expected to provide online access to 200,000 objects by year 2017. In the next phase of this project, we are planning to make online 42 site museums of Archeological Survey of India and state museums of India from this portal.
This project is funded by Ministry of Culture, Government of India. The portal was inaugurated by honorable Minister for Ministry of Culture, Government of India on 21st October 2014 which can be accessed from htpp://www.museumsofindia.gov.in