Virtual reality in museology: an analysis of the advantages and the desadvantages for cultural tourism

This paper describes the use of Virtual Reality in the museology context, as a means of encouraging visits to museums. It presents the origins of museums, the meaning of the word and the roles played by museums as cultural institutions in society. Next, a general view of virtual reality, its origins, its functioning and its use in diverse areas including museology is presented. The advantages and disadvantages of its use in museology is discussed. An analysis of the data collected by the application of questionaires aimed at verifying people's opinions in relation to visits to museums and their views as to the use of interactivity between museums and visitors is presented. The data collected reveal that people in general tend to give preference to other touristic attractions rather than to museums and that the students interviewed in the research tend to visit museum sites instead of personally visiting them. Nevertheless, the informants in general did not agree with the statement that virtual museums snbsititute visits to physical ones, although they agreed with the statement that the use of interactivity is capable of atracting more people. The results thus suggest that the use of interactive facilities is an important factor in attracting more visitors, and that virtual museum don't necessarily discourage visits to physical ones, since people still prefer physical institutions, and consider visiting museum sites merely a question of practicality.