The opening of the Jewish Museum Berlin on September 9th is anticipated with great excitement. On two storeys of the world-famous building designed by Daniel Libeskind, the Jewish Museum Berlin presents 2000 years of German-Jewish history. In addition to the exhibition in the established exhibition mode, visitors can come to a Multimedia Centre, the so called Rafael Roth Learning Centre, which has been developed since 1999. Here, visitors can gather varied and exciting information about Jewish-German history on single as well as group stations.

In employing digital ways of communication, the Jewish Museum is pursuing new territory in the presentation of content. It has opted for an IT-concept based on a consistent employment of innovative web technology.

The concept and realization of the JMB MultiMedia, as the project is called, rests with Pandora Neue Medien GmbH since 1999. The modularly structured and multilingual Content-Management-System ORA (Object Research Assistant) has been especially designed to fit the needs of the Museum. It enables an administration of the content without any media interruption for digital display in all stages of production. The technical, and especially the didactic concept for the JMB MultiMedia is geared towards a flexible handling of digital material. Should a visitor want to quickly search for specific information, they can enter a keyword and find a fitting answer. Someone else might prefer to explore the narratives on offer and embarks on an interactive journey.

With the implementation of this concept, Pandora Neue Medien GmbH offers museums and cultural institutions a foundation for new ways of communication and of imparting knowledge. Because the production and presentation are housed within the museum, content produced by the museum as well as external material can be archived, as well as composed according to specific needs, and can be displayed within the museum or via the internet.

Hereby all areas of a museums work are supported and enriched: the areas of exhibition, of publication, research , restoration and many more. Museums and cultural institutions will gain the possibility to build up links with other institutions, to include material and knowledge from different fields, and to distribute these across national borders.

As one of the pioneering European museums the Jewish Museum Berlin persistently employs innovative technologies such as video-, and audio-streaming, XML-exchange procedures, and internet technologies without any media interruption. Digital production and content refinement are further innovations, which are covered by the ORA Software package: data acquisition, clustering of data, multimedia and interactive presentation, goal orientated distribution and mastering access rights. A record tool enabling an evaluation of the visitors access rounds up the software. With the help of the gained statistical data the Jewish Museum Berlin will be in a position to develop content in a visitor-orientated way as well as to optimize it.