Virtual exhibitions as a collection environment of cultural events

Multimedia technology provides improved solutions to allow access to distributed resources and data in a variety of applications. There are examples of implementation in different domains, from commercial distribution through electronic commerce to virtual museums and dissemination of cultural information. In particular in the Cultural Heritage area there are already many different implementations of high quality services which are distributed either through specialised CD´s or through the Internet. The paper refers an experience which has been performed by Elsag SpA, in cooperation with Florence Archivio di State, to exploit the use of multimedia technology in the area of Virtual Exhibition, in order to maintain a memory of temporary events which otherwise, after the closure of the event itself are bound to disappear. The experiment has been implemented with the use of consolidated tools and techniques and demonstrates the maturity of available technology as well as its limitations and need of improvement