Transcript Collections Digital Strategy

Collections Digital Strategy
Alan Hart
Collections Digital Strategy
Science Strategy: Challenge: A new generation
of natural history museums – revolutionise our
collections use and availability.
• Vision – what we want to be: The Digital NHM. A new
wave of digital Museums
• Strategic Goals – planned objectives we want to achieve
• Approach to digitisation – how we are going to deliver
this new strategy
Collections Digital Strategy
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Infrastructure: complete the databasing of our collections
and make this information available in an open digital
format
Digital Museum: Establish high-throughput digitisation
pipelines to make large volumes of our data available
digitally
Work with our partners to create national virtual natural
history collections
Measuring success: Ensure 20 million of our
specimens are available in digital formats (5 years)
Note: anticipate complete in 10 years.
Collections Digital Strategy
Collections Digital strategy
Science Group Planning Conference
April 2013. Digitisation strategy.
•1. Strategy Development and organisation
•2. Digitisation and the generation of a virtual collection
•3. Enhance our data, improve our systems
•4. Content management
•5. Visibility and discovery
•6. Strategic alliances
•7. Resources, our staff
• What are the inter-dependencies? Key is to establish a
Digital Programme & associated board to drive forward.
80,000,000 - Wide ranging collection types
Collections Digital strategy
DEP
SPECS
RECORDS
TYPES
WET
SLIDES
Palaeontology
6,919,207
2,364,232
43,146
1,500
30,000
Mineralogy
423,563
425,000
615
1,200
83,500
Botany
5,863,000
127,200
172,750
908
Unknown
Entomology
33,753,257
57,197
612,796
6,736,612
788,159
Zoology
27,501,350
1,986,000
325,000
22,000,000
771,000
TOTALS
74,460,377
4,959,629
1,054,307
28,740,220
1,672,659
L&A
5,460,000
Curatorial challenge – significant backlogs in areas; Effective
re-curation and audit of entire collection to a modern
standard?
Collections Digital strategy
• Strategic partnerships, investigate potential for
funding, external partnerships (e.g. HLF)
Museums in the information age – Survival of the
most Digital? –
‘The Heritage Lottery Fund is now willing to invest
in digital only projects, as people who do find them
will play around and use them in ways we cannot
yet imagine - Museums need to evolve to remain
relevant in the age in which they operate’
Caroule Souter, Chief Executive HLF
Questions?