| Abstract | As Information Communication Technology (ICT) has progressively become the world’s favored means of handling digital information, many museums, libraries, and cultural heritage centers have invested in documentation of their collections and published their materials via the Web, making them available throughout the world. The challenges of maintaining valuable cultural artifacts include archiving, managing, integrating, and distributing cultural heritage 3D models using ICT technology. This well-organized data model supports collaborations, sharing of museum resources, and descriptions of cultural
artifact resources, enabling self-development experiences and distribution of museum
knowledge via 3D virtual exhibitions. This academic work discusses an integrated system to extract 3D cultural heritage objects from repositories. This system is particularly useful for building 3D virtual exhibitions as well as archiving and viewing the 3D cultural artifacts on a Web browser. It uses WebGL
technology, and collaborating museums are organized homogeneously by using Linked Open Data (LOD) technologies. Metadata and ontology standards are applied to support the entire curator content management process, including 3D object digitization to improve structured searches. A distributed platform and a 3D virtual exhibitions system using a Resource Description Framework (RDF) enhance information access, semantic searches, and shares, and link museum resources to virtual exhibitions. An authoring tool developed using Unity3D can organize 3D cultural artifact models, set virtual exhibition layouts, and present virtual exhibitions in a Web browser without installing any additional plugins. This research work was based on the implementation of distributed platforms and 3D virtual exhibition systems in the Chiang Mai National Museum, the Hariphuchai National Museum, and the Chiang Saen National Museum in order to analyze collaborations and investigate the museum systems. Over a six-month period, this experiment analyzed data collected from museum staff and museum visitor surveys before and after deployment of the system. The research found that the proposed online museum system significantly improved the museum staff’s efficiency in organizing museum work. In addition, museum users gained a greater knowledge of history, and post-implementation surveys showed high levels of user satisfaction with the museum systems. As a result of system implementation, education, research, promotion, and recreation for museums and online visitors all benefited.
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