LeMO: A virtual exhibition of 20th century German history

The aim of the LeMO project is to create a multimedia information system on 20th century German history in the Internet. This work is carried out in a joint project by the Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering (ISST), the German Historical Museum in Berlin and the Haus der Geschichte of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn. The LeMO system provides various options for accessing its information. With the need in mind to make cultural content attractive to young people, 3D environments have been developed for each period of 20th century history. These presentations constitute a different way of looking at history. Visitors navigate through 3D spaces to the various museum exhibits and can request further multimedia information on historical events (text, images, audio and video material). Access to specific content is also provided via a metadata-based search engine. The architecture of the LeMO system is based on Internet technologies (including VRML, HTML, streaming audio/video). This paper describes the concepts and implementations used within LeMO to structure and present information. By the end of 1998, 31 3D environments and over 4000 multimedia web pages covering various periods, topics, chronicles and biographies from German history had been developed for the virtual exhibition (www.dhm.de/lemo). From 1997-1998 LeMO was a project of DFN-Verein (the Association for the Promotion of a German Research Network) with financial support from Deutsche Telekom Berkom. In the LeMO + follow-up project funded by DFN-Verein, the LeMO system is to be given additional functionality and tested for use in the classroom. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.