By Shahfizal Musa
Pix Shahiddan Saidi

KUALA TERENGGANU, 12 August 2014 – The National University of Malaysia (UKM) is working with the Terengganu State Museum (MNT) to develop it into Malaysia’s first virtual museum enabling visitors to access more than 700 of its artefacts online.

The move will make MNT one of the pioneers of virtual museums in the world considering that only two such museums are currently operating in the world. It will also make MNT a centre of heritage with global reach.

Resources and expertise will be provided by UKM as well as MNT. Work on it began six months ago and is expected to be completed within 2 years.

A Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) was signed here today to formalise the collaboration by Deputy Vice Chancellor (Students and Alumni Affairs) Professor Datin Nor Aziah Mohd Awal for UKM and Chairman of MNT Dato’ Haji Mazlan bin Ngah

Virtual Museum enables visitors to have a virtual tour of the museum turning a local outfit to become an international referral centre by making all the artefacts available for visual examination online.

Prof Nor Aziah said the collaboration is an excellent example of strategic and smart partnership allowing the rich heritage of Terengganu to be shared with the world.

It will also make MNT a pioneer in online museum in the country while also generating online income for the museum.

Dato’ Mazlan said all the artefacts owned by MNT will be available for viewing with those wanting to see the artefacts in greater detail needing to pay only a small fee.

The collaboration with UKM enables the museum to make considerable savings since outsourcing such a project to a consultancy can burn a hole in the tax payers pocket considering that fees for such expertise and man power could run to several million ringgits.

Present at the ceremony was Dean of the Faculty of Information Science and Technology Prof Dr Abdullah Mohd Zin and officials from UKM and MNT.