Our Virtual Museum has no buildings, although the image we use on the website is borrowed from elements of real buildings. We had hoped to add to our building as time went on, but it remains small.
Without the resources to create a dedicated archaeological Museum in Thanet, an area which richly deserves one, the idea of the Virtual Museum of Thanet’s Archaeology was created in 2005 over a stimulating fry up in the Beano Café in Broadstairs (the digital hub of the Isle of Thanet heritage community in that year!).
With limited resources and equally limited, but increasing understanding of the technology, the idea of the Museum developed into a statement of intent and then into a functioning website, which we have since then used as tool to communicate with our community. With no bells and whistles, our little Museum does what it can to hold up the remains of Thanet’s archaeological past to view by the public. We share three aspirations that Museums all around the country will understand:
Done: We built the Virtual Museum of Thanet’s Archaeology from the resources that were available at the time.
Dedicated: We still feel the need for the museum almost a decade after we started our project.
Donate: We could do so much more to reveal the hidden discoveries of Thanet’s past if we had more resources. Find out how you can contribute.
The idea of a virtual Museum is nearly as old as the World Wide Web; a virtual Museum was one of the first sites to work with the early Mosaic Browser around 1992-93 shortly after Tim Berners-Lee created the Web as we know it. There’s an interesting academic article on the origin and function of Virtual Museums here: