Studying the web and its dynamics from a historical perspective, it is extremely important to acquire substantial data to trace the evolution of its development with the highest possible degree of detail both in content and in time. Web-archival resources are key historical sources that allow us to investigate contemporary history. However, despite the variety of existing web-archiving initiatives, web-archives are still characterized by a high degree of centralization, and the preservation of data for web history in the 1990s is concentrated in the repositories of major archives, such as the Internet Archive [1], to take a country-specific example. Therefore, the early stages of the development of the web and the possibilities of studying them are limited by the data of the Internet Archive. It is a well-known fact that the imperfection of the scanning and saving processes, various technical limitations negatively affected the completeness of the data that was archived. More recently, national web archiving programs provide more detailed information on national web resources and their history.

The incompleteness of data, technical and search limitations, and some other reasons are the grounds for the insufficient use of the resources of web archives in humanities research. Professor Jane Winters explains this by the need to develop specific approaches for operating web archives [2]. This circumstance should be taken into account conducting research in the field of web history and selecting suitable research methods. Data modeling is one such method for data analysis. Data modeling can be useful to some extent and has been successfully applied in a wide range of humanities research [3].

In the study of virtual museums’ history that is the focus of this paper, the goal has been to analyze the evolution of virtual museums from the moment they appeared on the Internet to the present. It is important to emphasize that the digital online initiatives of museums are a fundamentally important characteristic used to classify a museum website as a virtual museum [4]. A data modeling technique has been applied to analyze the digital initiatives of museums as implemented on museum sites.

To build the models, five museum websites were selected as being significant from different points of view. The first museum is the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA), as an example of a museum that has been using information technologies since the early 1960s. The museum is one of the pioneers in the application of information technology in the museum sector. The next case, the Canadian Museum of History (Quebec, Canada), is interesting from the point of view of the corporate culture in maintaining a web source since in the mid-1990s, as this museum was an association of three museums. The third museum is the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, Russia), an important example of non-linear development with an active start in the 1990s and significant advancement in the last decade, as one of the leading museums in the modern museum community. The fourth case is the National Museum of Australia (Canberra, Australia), which was chosen to compare web archives, in particular, the earlier mentioned Internet Archive and TROVE [5]. In addition, this museum is significant because it was founded relatively recently and continues to actively collect and shape collections. Finally, the fifth museum is the Deutsches Museum (Munich, Germany), which is selected due to the specificity of exhibits there. The museum is one of the largest in the world among science and technology museums, where intangible achievements in the form of knowledge about the laws of nature and the development of engineering and technology are of crucial importance.

The study analyzed site snapshots stored in web archives and built corresponding models to aid the research. The core element in the model is the digital initiatives that have been developed for the website. The tree of the elements includes several essential blocks divided into the parts related to the museum objects representation (for ex. Digital Collections, Digital Exhibitions), their function (such as Research, Education), specific of targeted audience, and the other features.

The models reveal interconnected key elements relevant to virtual museums using color design in selected blocks. Models also intended to visualize the content of websites and its changes, make it possible to trace the features of the structure of virtual museums. The results of the study are presented in more detail on the website of the Digital History of Virtual Museums project [6], where the models are to be found in the “Infographics” section.

In addition to its independent significance in the consideration of the history of separate virtual museums, data modeling opens up prospects for further research. For example, the developed data models can serve as the basis for developing conceptual and logical models for continuing research and the foundation to create a database for quantitative analysis of the web history of virtual museums.