ON THE CREATION OF HISTORICAL WATERWAYS VIRTUAL MUSEUM
Museums most effectively create the conditions for the preservation and presentation of unique documentary monuments of the historical cultural and natural heritage of our country. The historic waterways virtual museum is a combination of traditional museum and geographic information system (GIS) and includes cartographic materials collected by the authors in field expeditions, archives and libraries, as well as vector original maps that are GIS with large databases. A virtual location of the museum allows a wide range of users to get more information about a historic waterway, its area, particular settlement, cultural and historical landscape, to determine the intensity of historical and cultural sites around the waterway, to build their own waterway route and to make a tour at any time. The objects of the virtual museum preservation are: a combination of real natural, social, technological images and images generated in the GIS system, combining the characteristics of a print, map, computer animation and threedimensional model with the interactive control that creates an illusion of presence in the real space and enables interactive interaction with the user.