Restoration of a town house in Hove has helped museums around the world embrace new technology.

The Regency Town House project at 13 Brunswick Square is restoring one of the city's architectural treasures to its former glory.

Curator Nick Tyson and his team are using the latest technology to chronicle the regeneration work and share the story with the house's many visitors.

As part of this process, the team has developed software for building interactive historical presentations which has been made freely available to other institutions.

Mr Tyson said: "About five years ago, multimedia really took off in the museum world and small museums wanted to have the same impressive presentations as their larger counterparts.

"The main stumbling block was cost.

Authoring tools for multimedia cost hundreds of pounds and usually need expert programmers commanding huge fees to operate them.

"We set about making a new multimedia design tool for non-technical people.

We wanted to be able to manufacture presentations for touchscreen kiosks.

"At first, the motivation was purely to make something we could use for the town house but we quickly realised the potential for our contemporaries."

In the late Nineties, the team applied for funding from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and, with an award, created Conveyor software, so named because it was designed to help people convey their messages.

Mr Tyson said: "The software produces a scrollable picture on which you pick out points of interest to click for more information.

A link can be added to any part of the image, to highlight a person, place or item through which the user can navigate the next stage of the presentation.

"This structure leads to deeper levels so people can explore as much or as little of the subject as they want."

The team tested their software by making a presentation about Brighton's Regency promenade, based on a panoramic picture from 1833 and interweaved it with new multimedia content.

More information on the project can be seen at the town house web site.

Last year, Mr Tyson demonstrated Conveyor at the International Council of Museums conference.

He said: "World-wide interest was huge and, since then, we have developed a Dutch version for use in Belgium and Holland.

"Thanks to funding from the American Express Foundation, we are now working on making Conveyor available to museums in south east Asia.

"I have just come back from Borneo where I was showing people how to use the software."

The team is making the software available in more languages with new versions to be launched later this year.

This weekend (September 8 and 9) the Regency Town House is holding Open Door 2001, allowing public access to the buildings.

Last year, more than 4,000 people visited the house during a similar event.

www.regency-townhouse. org.uk