Culture Minister David Lammy has launched a new data-sharing initiative linking the 24 Hour Museum with the national and international tourism agency VisitBritain, helping to raise the profile of UK museums and galleries online.
Behind the scenes, 24 Hour Museum is currently being redesigned and once the new site is relaunched in spring 2007, visitors to VisitBritain’s websites will be able to find the latest information on museum and gallery events and exhibitions on any of the 46 VisitBritain websites, published in 23 languages and visited by more than 15 million people worldwide.
Launching the partnership, David Lammy said: “people don’t plan their holidays in a separate box from thinking about the things they want to do and see. This new link-up will make it easier for visitors to Britain and visitors already here to get the most out of their visit. It means visitors with a specialist cultural or historical interest will be able to find what they want more easily.”
The 24 Hour Museum website has 3,700 UK institutions registered on its database with up to 2,000 events listed at any one time. Venues are able to input their own event information and update it when they like, as often as they like.
The new partnership means even the smallest museum or gallery, often with limited marketing resources, will find information entered onto the 24 Hour Museum site automatically available to international audiences via visitbritain.com.
“This partnership brings together two important separately funded government services,” said Jane Finnis, 24 Hour Museum director.
“It will give online audiences everywhere access to more comprehensive cultural information to inspire and help them plan their holidays and days out. It signals a new era of partnership and co-operation to support cultural tourism.”
The Culture Minister hoped that the initiative would lead to further collaborative working in the sector:
“This partnership will also open the door to new collaborations,” Lammy said. “Sharing 24 Hour Museum’s editorial experience in the museum sector with VisitBritain’s reach and profile should encourage a growing range of tourist-linked promotions for the future.”
"Joining up live data sources like the 24 Hour Museum and VisitBritain forms a really important part of the infrastructure that will one day build a really useful cultural web space," said Jon Pratty, Editor of the 24 Hour Museum. "As major publishers develop fascinating new generation websites like MySpace, Google Maps and Windows Live Local, the cultural sector has a really interesting opportunity to provide cultural information to mix into these sites."
