Information architecture and visual representation of virtual museums

The challenge of virtual museums was to deal with a great number of museum information while the extensive integrated multimedia contents and interactive technologies enriched the representations of the virtual museum in www world. The purpose of the article is to develop an effective management of visual elements systems to visually represent the information structure of the virtual museums. On the basis of previous studies on the human visual/spatial perception, the representation of the hierarchical structure of the virtual museum can be visually transformed into spatial depth, as well as the position and proportion of visual elements. Furthermore, we referred the database technology to the visual systems to sort out five categories of visual elements in the terms of Web application technology, organizational structures of information, electronic resources, navigation systems and assistant systems for navigation. Finally, a conclusion would address the future development of the visual elements system.