Former name | Virtual Museum of Canada |
---|---|
Established |
|
Type | Funding program |
Director | Leah Resnick [1] |
Owner | Canadian Museum of History |
Website |
www |
Canadian Museum of History network | |
Digital Museums Canada (DMC; French: Musées numériques Canada, MNC) is a funding program in Canada "dedicated to online projects by the museum and heritage community," helping organizations to build digital capacity. [2]
Administered by the Canadian Museum of History (CMH) with the financial support of the Government of Canada, DMC provides investments of CA$15,000 to $250,000 for audience-engaging online projects by Canadian museums and heritage organizations. [2] [3]
The Virtual Museum of Canada was proceeded by the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC), which existed from 2001 to 2021. [4] The VMC was launched by the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) of the Department of Canadian Heritage as a major collaborative online initiative to allow Canadian museums and heritage organizations to connect with online visitors. [5] [6]
In February 2014, the Government of Canada announced its intention to transfer the VMC and the Online Works of Reference to the Canadian Museum of History (CMH). Bill C-31, an Act to implement certain provisions of the budget and other measures, soon after received royal assent confirming that the CMH would assume responsibility for these two programs. [5] [7]
The VMC grew to include virtual exhibits, [8] educational resources for teachers (in both French and English), [9] and over 900,000 images. [10] Additionally, the VMC Investment Program was created to invest in Canadian museums to create online exhibitions. The Virtual Exhibits Investment Program was geared to medium- to large-sized institutions. [11] The other offerings were the Community Memories Program, an investment program designed for smaller Canadian community museums, to allow them to create online exhibits about their history. [11]
In 2020, the Virtual Museum of Canada was created as a successor to the VMC with a focus on investing in online projects by Canadian museums and heritage organizations rather than offering a public facing online portal like the VMC. [3] Following this new mandate, in 2021, with a directory of over 3,000 Canadian heritage institutions and a database of over 600 virtual exhibits, the VMC website was scheduled to discontinue hosting exhibits on 30 June 2021. [4] [8]