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As a fundamental part of the objectives laid down for the Òliba group project for its first stage of research (1999-2001), the design and implementation of a series of virtual exhibitions was undertaken, in collaboration with various museums in Catalonia, the basic research premise of which was the idea of their being complementary to their corresponding physical exhibitions, together with the subsequent evaluation of this pioneer experience, with the ultimate aim of attempting to define valid parameters for future museum websites. There was also another objective, which the Group's subsequent evolution, and that of the project itself, have confirmed: we considered this experiment a pilot test that would permit us to document the importance that technological resources, information and communications technologies (ICT), have and must have for museology and museography and, thus, for museums and heritage institutions, a field which, in certain geographical areas, such as Spain and Portugal, still has to develop. Just a year ago now, the XIX ICOM (International Council of Museums) Conference in Barcelona (2-6 July, 2001) proposed as one of the themes for its sessions the changes museums are seeing and the impact ICT have had and, increasingly, will have in the management and organisation of museums ("Managing change: the museum facing economic and social changes"). Understanding and evaluating to what extent that is in fact true was thus another fundamental objective, as we sought to "evaluate the effectiveness of new technologies (which we might now call ICT) in promoting and documenting cultural heritage". With that then as our starting point, four virtual exhibitions were put on, complementing four other physical exhibitions which had the same name: "Always Ibiza and Formentera", "Aureum Opus: Five Centuries of Illustrated Books", "Will you write me a letter?" and "Treasures of Nature". We tracked and evaluated these virtual exhibitions, to different degrees and in different ways, and present our results in this paper.
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Català
