AN ONLINE museum with Singapore artefacts from the national collection will be launched next year.

Three-dimensional photographs of artefacts, as well as artwork, will be taken and digitised. All these will be uploaded and collated into a massive gallery to create the Cyber Museum.

When it is launched, users will get to 'virtually curate their own exhibitions', said Rear-Admiral (NS) Lui Tuck Yew, who gave his addendum to the President's address on Thursday. Museum designers, curators, schoolchildren and other public users can pick from the items in the digital galleries to create their own exhibitions.

The Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts had mentioned the idea in an interview last month with journalists, saying that the Cyber Museum would encourage 'a wide spectrum' of people to come forward.

Though the Cyber Museum is for all users, it is likely to appeal most to the tech-savvy younger generation.

In the start-up phase now, each of the national museums will digitise one of its key galleries, capturing 3-D images of between 20 and 30 of its artefacts.

It will be Singapore's first Cyber Museum, though many museums elsewhere do show some of their collections online.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in the United States, for instance, has a database picturing and describing more than 130,000 items in its collections, though not in 3-D.

A Mica spokesman said the virtual museum was part of the museums' and heritage institutions' efforts to use electronic media.

Teacher G. Chan, 50, said a virtual museum would definitely make it easier for lesson preparation. But it has its drawbacks. 'At the museum, you can see the real size, texture or thickness of the object.'

Read the full story in The Straits Times today.

serl@sph.com.sg