A virtual museum

France's cultural heritage is indexed by conservation professionals and art historians to create valuable text databases. The French Ministry of Culture's information system is organized around a set of three major database, each containing approximately 80 fields. The databases are: Merimee, it describes the entire collection of monuments; Palissy, it describes the furniture heritage; and Joconde, it describes the paintings, drawings, and sculptures in French museums. These databases are supported by a powerful document-retrieval system French conservation professionals are using. Since user interface is not suited for the general public on the Internet, the databases are incorporated with World Wide Web query capabilities and a protocol.