The paper proposes the smart museum, a concept that merges physical and non-physical objects with informational objects to generate a collaborative environment for cultural heritage development. Such an environment is usable by both professional historians and visitors and would enable an enhanced interaction among individuals participating in the discovery process.

Such a museum has the following main features: users (professional historians and visitors) are involved in the processes of knowledge creation and consumption; information is gathered from the global Internet as well as dedicated museum information systems (MIS); and it is a context-aware pervasive system allowing interaction through a variety of devices (smartphones and so on).

The authors provide a detailed related work section on MIS, specifically focusing on the layering of the functions provided by such systems. The case study of the history museum of Petrozavodsk University is presented, outlining a semantic layer that binds together public multimedia devices, personal mobile devices, and the MIS using a set of knowledge processors. The software infrastructure is based on the Smart-M3 platform, an open-source development where M3 stands for multi-device, multi-vendor, multi-domain, highlighting the service-oriented nature of the system. As a feasibility study, the paper ends with a brief presentation of similar projects, targeting advanced museums in the US and Europe. The paper is well written and provides a good overview of the work done in the smart museums arena, with a clear emphasis on the semantic layer requirements and constraints, as well as the integration within the Internet of Things (IoT) concept.