Since 2006, the City Museum of Stockholm has published images depicting artifacts and photographs from the museum collections on the website Stockholmskällan (www.stockholmskallan.se). The website provides images ranging from historical photos of the city, art objects, cultural artifacts to historical documents and records. The website is a collaboration between cultural heritage institutions and the Stockholm Education Administration. The museum selects website content to fit the primary target audience: school children and students in primary and senior secondary school, age twelve to 20 years.
On the website, about 50 guides for teachers are available, with examples of how they can use the digitized heritage resources in their teaching. The website displays search results in four different ways, in order to match pupils’ and students’ different learning styles. A popular feature on the website is “Compare Map”, which makes it possible to compare historical maps with today’s map.
As part of Stockholmskällan, there is also a smartphone app called Historical Stockholm Images (Historiska Stockholmsbilder). The app makes it possible to search for images based on the user’s current geographic position. The user can also upload her/his own personal photo of the location and provide personal comments.
Classification map
The City Museum also publishes a classification map , (kartor.stockholm.se/bios/dpwebmap/cust_sth/kul/klassificering/DPWebMap.html )
which displays historically important buildings and archeological remains. The website visitor can use this map to access additional related information.
The Digital City Museum
In April 2013, another website, the Digital City Museum (digitalastadsmuseet.stockholm.se), was launched. The aim of this new initiative is to publish all the information and images with historical content that is available in digitized format. As of today, 33 000 items are digitally catalogued and published, including images of original photographs, objects, and various types of documents including treaties and records. The Digital City Museum also contains digitized museum records such as the records of available original photographic images and the list of keywords used in the museum catalog system.
In the Digital City Museum, not only keyword and title searches can be performed, but also full text searches on available covering documents. This enables visitors to efficiently find historical information and knowledge. For example, the location of the former street Kokhusgränd is described in an archeological report from 2000; this information is easy to retrieve from the website, but would be very difficult to find without the website.
In essence, the Digital City Museum is an information hub with automation functions that integrate data from various databases and other sources. Through the system, visitor access to historical photographic images is also greatly simplified. Add-in functions are available for download, which enable loading of photographic images into MS Word and MS PowerPoint.