From nobelsrv@www.nobel.ki.seWed Nov 20 21:48:38 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 20:04:47 +0100 From: Nobel Foundation WWW Server This message is sent to all subscribers for press releases from the Nobel Foundation. If you are not interested in this information, please remove your address at http://www.nobel.se/mail-list/mail-list.html This press release will be distributed to this Email list as well as announced on the www server at the Nobel Foundation (http://www.nobel.se/). *** The Electronic Nobel Museum Project The Nobel Foundation, Box 5232, S-102 45 Stockholm, Sweden There is a world-wide interest in the discoveries, cultural and political achievements recognized by the Nobel Prizes, as well as in the Laureates and in the donor, Alfred Nobel. This interest is culminating in December 1996 in connection with the centennial of Alfred Nobel's death in 1896. This spring the Nobel Foundation decided to meet the demand for more information by creating an Electronic Nobel Museum (ENM). The museum will be built by stepwise expansion of the present Nobel Website (http://www.nobel.se). This site came on-line in October 1995 and has been used to present information about the 1995 and 1996 Nobel Prizes, the Nobel Foundation, and the Prize Awarding Institutions. During the first 12 months the website was accessed more than 1.4 million times by visitors from all over the world. The next stage in constructing ENM includes the addition of more biographic data about the donor, Alfred Nobel, his inventions, and his role as an international industrialist. The Laureates will be represented by their own autobiographies, portraits, and essays relating to achievements recognized by the Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace, and by the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The Nobel Foundation, the Prize Awarding Institutions and the rules governing the selection of Laureates are covered by other articles. The Internet visitor will be able to choose among a broad spectrum of documents ranging from popular to educational. A "Young Scholars" section will contain animated and interactive documents explaining the work of the Laureates to high school and college students. Virtual tours will be offered to places of scientific or cultural interest. The Nobel Internet Library will contain the proceedings of Nobel Symposia and lecture series sponsored by the Prize Awarding Institutions. The library also serves as a guide to the printed and electronic Nobel literature with direct links to publishers. Initially the ENM will contain mainly text documents and pictures that can be viewed on a computer screen or printed locally. Video, sound and high-resolution pictorial documents which cannot yet be distributed on-line will be available off-line as CD-ROM or DVD-ROM disks. The building of the ENM will be carried out by the ENM-group of the Nobel Foundation in collaboration with the Prize Awarding Institutions and cultural institutions in Sweden, Norway, and other countries. Multimedia documents produced by scientific institutions, museums and commercial multimedia producers will be integrated into the electronic museum by the ENM-group. The core version of the ENM will be in English but translations into other languages are planned. The scientific, literary and political expertise for building the ENM is provided by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, The Medical Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute, the Swedish Academy, the Norwegian Nobel Committee and by collaborating cultural institutions in other countries. The ENM project is funded by grants from the Foundation for Knowledge and Competence Development, Stockholm, Sweden, and by other foundations and private donors. An Electronic Nobel Museum (ENM) offering high-quality information will represent an important cultural and educational resource of international interest. This will be in the spirit of Alfred Nobel who lived and worked in many different countries and spoke several languages. Nils Ringertz Michael Sohlman Professor Executive Director ENM-group Nobel Foundation Email: info@enm.nobel.se Email: info@enm.nobel.se --- Edited by the webmaster of the Nobel Foundation (webmaster@www.nobel.se)