The British Museum

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• Learn more about Africa, architecture, art, arts, Asia, crafts, Europe, fine art, folk arts, global education, North America, South America, technology, and world history.

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“This Museum holds in trust for the nation and the world a collection of art and antiquities from ancient and living cultures. Housed in one of Britain’s architectural landmarks, the collection is one of the finest in existence, spanning two million years of human history.”The British Museum’s website contains three major sections that are helpful to the student and the teacher:

• World Cultures explores eleven different cultures including the Americas, Greece, and Japan through a series of exhibits and informational materials that focus on artifacts, money, cultural tradition, graphic arts, and science.
• Compass is the database of the museum’s collections. The collections may be searched by keyword and their are also “tours,” which contain additional background information. A few of these guided tours include Agatha Christie and Archaelogy, the Ancient Olympics, and A Kind of Magic that looks at amulets, charms, and talismans throughout the world.
• Children’s Compass, in addition to tours designed for younger people such as animals, time, and mummies, includes a look at games that have been around for centuries with printable materials so that kids and their families can play too.

There are many barriers to experiencing museums and their holdings to the fullest. One issue is space; museum objects far exceed the capacity of public viewing areas, so much of the collection remains out of sight. Time is also a factor, since a one-day museum visit simply does not allow a complete exploration of each object and its context. Museum websites are providing innovative ways to extend the reach of the facility; even the Atlantic Ocean is no longer an obstacle to the North Carolina student viewing the treasures of the British Museum.The British Museum Explore section is one museum’s answer to the questions of access and the use of the Internet to reach a global audience. Records in this database provide detailed descriptions, images, and references to related objects for more than 5,000 items from the British Museum’s world-renowned collection of antiquities from Egypt, the Near East, Greece and Rome, and Asia. You can search this site for objects, narrowing your search by Who (artist/historical figure), What (type of object), How (materials or technique), or Where/When (place and time). If you prefer, you can also take one of the many guided tours, such as Changing Faces: Masks of the British Museum or Annuraaq: clothing of Arctic North America.The Families and Children Explore area provides access to many of the same works of art and artifacts, but the records are written for younger students. Related objects are pictured and linked on the record, and the ability to store objects in a file folder for later use is being developed. Searching is quite simple: the student simply selects the culture or geographic region of interest, then a subject area (Daily Life, Leaders and rulers, Warfare, Gods and Spirits, Birds and Beasts, Tools and Technology, Dress and Ornament, and Death). The search returns a paragraph summarizing the topic, and thumbnail images link the objects that fit in the selected culture and category. Some combinations of place and subject are not yet available, particularly in areas not as well represented in the museum such as the Americas. Tours are also available on kid-pleasing topics like Animal Mummies and Sport in Ancient Greece.Don’t miss the British Museum’s Learning Home Page, and the stellar Illuminating World Cultures interactive multimedia sites that are published by the educational outreach department of the museum:

• Ancient India
• Ancient Greece
• Ancient Egypt
• Ancient China
• Mesopotamia
• Mughal India
• Early Imperial China

In addition to the civilization-specific sites, the thematic Ancient Civilizations exhibit permits explorations of writing, trade, religion, cities, and technology across time and across the globe.