Hi Mike
Another vote for engagement from me - although the very definition of the word engagement seems to elude lots of digital museum projects.
I’ve worked on a fair few collections online jamborees. As well as worked on projects that use collections, online, but in a deeper and more interesting way.
I’ve often wondered what kind of audience research is behind the constant drive to digitise 100s, 1000s and indeed millions of records of questionable condition. Has anyone asked their public if they want this?
Digitisation often feels like a numbers game. And something to be achieved, digitally, in a clever way, by the metadata fans - rather than something that fulfills a real need and want out there from online audiences.
In my experience audiences like stories. More thoughtful, needs-driven digitisation of fit-for-purpose object records makes much more sense to me. My hunch is audiences neither want nor need entire collections online.
I remember we did some evaluation of potential section titles for the Science Museum's 'new' website back in 2007 and 'collections online' was a term that was not understood by so many people we decided not to use it. If people don't even understand the term, how are they going to be excited by the dirty exposed museum underbelly records that make up most of the content in these digitisation projects?
Jane
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