Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle

Presentation of the Slovenian National Theatre Museum

Francka Slivnik

Slovenski gledaliski muzej, Ljubljana

Winds of Change - New Technology

21st International Congress

Helsinki, 31 August - 6 September 1996

Dear friends

Here we are again to share and exchange our experiences, to get new ideas and new initiatives for our future work and collaboration.

I would like to stress that since we have become a member of SIBMAS we started our collaboration with IBT, we were invited to contribute the Slovenian part to the SIBMAS International Directory of Performing Arts Collection, we exchanged some exhibitions and together with members of SIBMAS for Central Europe, we prepared the exhibition "Shakespeare in Theatres of Central Europe Between the Two Wars" that toured from Ljubljana to Vienna, Bratislava, Zagreb, Budapest, Birmingham, Prague and will hopefully travel to Mannheim and Bern. We will also gladly contribute our paper to the conference organized by the Slovak SIBMAS Centre in Bratislava this autumn.

This conference here in Helsinki opens the door to new, more intensive international collaboration or at least to an exchange of information enabled by new technology, new media: e-mail and internet.

I come from a relatively young and small country which is very open to new ideas and international collaboration. Offices, schools, institutes and even families are not only familiar with computers, they use them intensively. Due to great understanding and financial support of the Slovenian Ministry of Culture, Slovenian museums are computerised and many of them have access both to internet and e mail. So I do have access to internet from my office and I have an E-mail address as well. There are some museums that not only can read internet but also have the necessary equipment and knowledge to contribute their information to internet. If you went through the Slovenian pages, you could read about the National Museum of Slovenia, the City Museum of Ljubljana, the Museum of Modern History and also some Slovenian theatres have their pages on internet.

The pages presenting our museum are, so to say, a by-product of a CD-ROM prepared by the Museum of Modern History. Namely, it will bring information about the Slovenian Museums and will be presented in Paris next year at the traditional Museum Fair. I was asked to contribute the information and the material representing our museum. The software expert who scanned the material I brought to the Museum of Modern History has, prior to my visit, created their internet pages and was willing to share his experience with me.

Approximately at the same time, in July, a group of theatre professionals had a press conference in our museum. They explained that they would like to start a computerized information centre for all Slovenian theatres. They prepared their pilot projects in Soros Centre where they had free access to the equipment that enabled them to create the internet pages.

We transferred the material scanned for CD-ROM to a compatible computer in Soros Centre, hoping that we may finish a presentation of our museum on internet before we come to Helsinki.

I prepared the content and organized the pages, the theatre director Dragan Zivadinov created the digital dramaturgy and the digital artist here with me, Mr. Luka Piskoric, created the web pages.

Starting the work we found out that Mr. Rodenhuis has already realized his promise to put information about SIBMAS on the internet, so we linked our pages with his and we also respected the SIBMAS International Directory of Performing Arts Collections as a basic work.

If e-mail will improve our quick, direct and inexpensive text communication between the correspondents, internet may enable us to add attractive images to the very precious and basic information given by the SIBMAS International Directory of Performing Art Collections. It allows us to add illustrative to the informative. I feel that internet enables us to become more attractive for general public, visitors of the exhibitions and may encourage or better, intensify the collaboration of researchers. And internet also allows the direct link between the members of SIBMAS.

I tried to illustrate the information of the location, describe a short history of our museum, present some items from the collections representing different theatres from different regions and from different periods of Slovenian theatre history. Finally I added a page that will be alterated from time to time and inform the visitors about the exhibitions and events.

Let's start the presentation.

I supposed that the information is prepared for someone who is in Slovenia, is planning to visit Slovenia or simply surfing Slovenian pages to get acquainted with Slovenian museums. The webs are designed so that the user may easily choose the direction, move forward or backward from page to page simply by clicking the proper icon.

Here you can read the hint that we are a member of SIBM~S. If you want to read information about SIBM~S you simply click the icon of SIBM~S and you are linked with it.

When you who want to go through the pages of our museum you click the icon of our museum.

This is an index of content. You simply click the chapter you want to read.

history

collections

exhibitions & events

location

Let's suppose you want to know something about the history of the museum. I adapted the text I wrote for A Guide to the Museums of Slovenia and is mentioned in the SIBMAS International Directory of Performing Arts Collections. If I resume the text, it tells that The Slovenian Theatre Museum was founded in 1952. In 1978 the Film Museum merged to form the National Theatre and Film Museum and recently, in August 1996, it was divided into two independent institutions namely Slovenian National Theatre Museum and Slovenian Cinematheque, which has its own pages on internet. The photographs represent the first two directors of the Slovenian Theatre Museum and the two basic books published by them. To go back to index click the image at the bottom which is the first publication of the Slovenian Theatre Museum.

By clicking the icon collections, you find the index of collections.

For the iconotheque, click it's icon. You see different types of documents in the collection. As you see, the organization of our pages allows you to browse the pages and also enables you to look closer at the individual items. You can move forward or backward either with arrows on the keyboard or with the mouse. If you want to look closer or enlarge the image you simply click it.

The icons at the bottom of the page enable you to click backwards, to a previous page.

For the library, click the library icon. There is a general written information and again some more interesting samples which you can look closer. The icon at the bottom has been selected from animations available on internet.

For the archive collection, click the archive icon. Again we felt that the short description would help to introduce samples.

For the videotheque, click the icon for the videotheque.

The page exhibitions and events could have the function of immediate exchange of information of the activities of members of SIBMAS. This segment will of course demand constant updating. We do not have a permanent exhibition, but only temporary ones. Here you can see some photographs from the exhibition which will be there until October 15: 10 years of Slovenian theatre called Koreodrama.

Location

Suppose you are coming to Ljubljana, you find our museum interesting and would like to visit us. Click the icon location on the index. Here you find all detailed information about the address, telephone and fax numbers and also my e-mail address. By clicking the image of the map of Ljubljana you will get a closer look to the old part of the city between the castle and the river Ljubljanica with the blue arrow marking the position of our museum. Here we tested the use of the moving images on internet. We used the VHS record to illustrate the exterior . If you click video 1 you approach us from one street, if you click video 2 you approach us from another street.

To conclude: our internet pages would like to be an illustration of the SIBMAS International Directory of Theatre Collections and to point out that it is possible to make a link between the members of SIBMAS on internet.

Thank you.

21st Congress

URL: http://www.sibmas.org/congresses/sibmas96/hels12.html