The Digital Agenda in Museums 2013

The Digital Agenda in Museums

June 2013

Further info hereFurther

info here

www.collectionslink.org.uk/sustaining-digital

Current ideas and trends

1. Changing demand for museum services2. Digital Strategy3. Digital Benchmarking4. SPECTRUM is your friend!5. Create Once, Publish Everywhere6. Digital promiscuity(!)7. Metrics and evaluation8. The UK funding picture9. Mobile, social & responsive10. Cloud11. Public-access wifi

Changing demand

BBC Research into participation in digital media, May 2012

Changing demand

91% of teachers use technology in the classroom60% increase in mobile devices in the classroom/on campus in 201386% of students believe they study better with tablet devices….

Who are you doing it for?

(Digital) Strategy

• The majority of museums are moving away from Digital strategy towards embedding digital into broader organisational strategy including:

– Strategic Planning– Marketing & audience development– Learning & outreach– Collections development/management– Fundraising/income generation– Content publishing

• The key principle is integration – digital is neither different nor separate and is only sustainable in the context of your museum’s broader strategic development

From ‘access’ to ‘engagement’

http://www.digitalengagementframework.com/

Digital Benchmarking = understanding where you are and planning strategically for where you want to go

Going on a journey (sorry)

Get startedGet started Find where you are

Find where you are Quick WinsQuick Wins Promote

yourself onlinePromote

yourself online

Open up collections

online

Open up collections

online

Create great content

Think about Systems

Generate income

Go socialGo socialEmbrace

Participation & Engagement

Embrace Participation &

Engagement

Manage Digital Assets

Sort out Digital Copyright

Measure Success

Create Sustainable

Digital Content

Create Sustainable

Digital Content

Grapple with the Technical

Plan for the Future!

Digital Benchmarks

• A simple diagnostic tool

• Mapping progress

• Celebrating success

• Planning development

• An integrated approach

Digital Benchmark “Range Statements”StrategyLevel Description0 The organisation has no strategic plan or statement of mission or purpose *1 The organisation has a strategic plan or mission which does not reference engagement

through technology2 The organisation has a strategic plan, which includes projects and programmes, some of

which make use of technology. Digital is not fully integrated into the strategy, which is not regularly reviewed.

3 The organisation has a strategic plan, which includes projects and programmes, some of which make use of technology.

Digital is integrated into the strategy, which is regularly reviewed. 4 The organisation has a strategic plan/mission in place which references the use of digital

technologies to support core delivery, or it has a separate (but connected) digital strategy in place.

There is at least one digital champion within the senior management of the organisation. The strategic plan is regularly reviewed and updated.

5 The organisation has a strategic plan/mission in place which integrates the use of digital technologies to support core delivery.

The digital elements of the plan are owned and championed at a senior (Board & management) level and supported by appropriate budgets.

Digital technologies are embedded across all teams/departments of the organisation. Digital delivery and engagement through technology are embedded within the

organisation’s performance framework. The strategic plan is regularly reviewed and updated.

Mid-sized regional museum

Smaller museum

Showing progress

What do people want from your collections online?

What people want from online collections…

CONTENT

METADATA

A BIT A LOT

CONTENT

METADATA

A BIT A LOT

CONTENT

METADATA

A BIT A LOT

RESEARCH

CONTENT

METADATA

A BIT A LOT

RESEARCH

LEARNINGOUTREACH

CONTENT

METADATA

A BIT A LOT

RESEARCH

LEARNING

DATA MININGCOLLECTIONS

MANAGEMENT

AGGREGATION

OUTREACH

CONTENT

METADATA

A BIT A LOT

RESEARCH

LEARNING

MANAGEMENT

AGGREGATION

OUTREACH

Digitize relatively few things & invest in depth, description & promotion

CONTENT

METADATA

A BIT A LOT

RESEARCH

LEARNING

MANAGEMENT

AGGREGATION

OUTREACH

Digitize relatively few things & invest in depth, description & promotion

Digitize lots of things and put relatively little effort into description & promotion

The good news is that browsing collections online accounts for 25-30% of museum web traffic, can improve your search engine find-ability and tends to have a significant impact on dwell times on your website.

What does the average museum content/collections publishing setup look like?

Creation/ curation layer

Integration layer

Presentation layer

Aggregation/ distribution layer

Integration layer

Presentation layer

CMS DAMSCollMS

Integration layer

Presentation layer

Integration tools

CMS DAMSCollMS

Integration layer

Presentation layer

Integration tools

CMS DAMSCollMS

Web SocialMobile Gallery

Integration layer

Presentation layer

Integration tools

CMS DAMSCollMS

BBC GoogleWMUK Euro Culture Grid

Integration layer

Presentation layer

Integration tools

CMS DAMSCollMS

LOTS OF HAPPY USERS

Integration layer

Presentation layer

Integration tools

CMS DAMSCollMS

LOTS OF HAPPY USERS

The whole rest of the world…

Integration layer

Presentation layer

Integration tools

CMS DAMSCollMS

LOTS OF HAPPY USERSPeople will generate

and share new knowledge about your collections

The good news is that all of this stuff is a lot easier if your practice is already based on SPECTRUM – there’s a clear line of progression from SPECTRUM-based documentation to digital engagement

BSI PAS 197 BSI PAS 198

ACCREDITATION BENCHMARKS

WORLDWIDE COMMUNITY (7,600)

COMPLIANCE(23,000)

GUIDANCEPDF/XML/PRINT+ SCHEMA

NEW IDEAS

SPECTRUM Digital Asset Management

• Integrating the creation, management, use and improvement of Digital Assets alongside your physical collections management

• Out now (free) on Collections Link

SPECTRUM Digital Asset Management

Most museum management systems are evolving away from silos and towards providing integrated or modular systems for managing the flow of information and

resources across the whole museum…

We have to stop doing things differently for each new project or partnership, and start to develop digital content and services that are scalable and futureproof. The strategic approach to this is called ‘COPE’ (Create Once, Publish Everywhere)

How to COPE

• Try to break the cycle of lurching from one project to the next, making ad-hoc decisions & hacking systems to get them ready in time for launch(!)

• Work with your curator(s) to create content (stories and pictures) that can travel across different platforms and websites

• Make content that other people can incorporate into their own websites and online experiences

Integration layer

Presentation layer

Integration tools

CMS DAMSCollMS

LOTS OF HAPPY USERS

It’s not a question of ‘which digital platform/community should I work with?’ – be digitally promiscuous, exploit all of them to drive more people to your museum, your collections and your shop

Get out there…

www.culturegrid.org.uk

Click on this…

http://g-cultural-institute.appspot.com/signup and this

http://commons.wikimedia.org and this

Without some kind of structure for metrics and evaluation in place, it can be very hard to see when you’re making progress.

Set up analytics…

http://weareculture24.org.uk/lets-get-real-resources/

There are very few easily-accessible digital funding streams in the UK. The main options are (a) to embed digital natively into your funding proposals or (b) convince your museums to spend core funds on digital…

UK Funding Programmes

• The new HLF funding framework (announced last year) permits projects which focus on engagement/participation and which use technology to support these outcomes

• The JISC and AHRC Digitisation funds are now closed

• Some small grantmaking trusts and foundations are still supporting digitisation, but other than this most museums (87% according to the ENUMERATE survey) are now funding digitisation from core funds

Making money from digital

• Most people don’t pay for most pictures

• Where they do pay, it is for very specific iconic images for commercial re-use

• Nobody makes money from running a picture library

• The 90/8/2 rule works (make 90% of the collection freely available for people to share, look after the 8% you think might have commercial potential and focus your licensing and distribution on the 2% you know will generate revenue…)

The vast majority of your audience will be habitual mobile/handheld users. All of your web publishing has to be responsive (which means that it displays/works on mobile platforms and gives the user an experience which responds to their actions, including the ability to share with their social community)…

Going on a journey (sorry again!)

Get startedGet started Find where you are

Find where you are Quick WinsQuick Wins Promote

yourself onlinePromote

yourself online

Open up collections

online

Open up collections

online

Create great content

Think about Systems

Generate income

Go socialGo socialEmbrace

Participation & Engagement

Embrace Participation &

Engagement

Manage Digital Assets

Sort out Digital Copyright

Measure Success

Create Sustainable

Digital Content

Create Sustainable

Digital Content

Grapple with the Technical

Plan for the Future!

An ever-increasing number of UK museums are ‘outsourcing’ their collections management IT & infrastructure by moving to browser-based versions of their Collections Management, Web Content and Digital Asset Management systems.

Collections Management Software as a Service and collections data in the cloud provides secure, scalable and cost-effective infrastructure for managing the growing body of museum information & collections-related assets.

http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/is-now-the-time-for-collections-in-the-cloud/

Collections in the Cloud

The provision of Internet-connected terminals and public-access wifi has had a transformative effect in Public Libraries, but has had a difficult time in UK museums.

There are challenges to do with the nature of the buildings museums are in, as well as establishing (and paying for) free public wifi infrastructure.

Beyond this, there seems to be a sense that public access wifi is a distraction from rather than an addition to the core museum experience.

There is very little published research into this field currently available.

Public access wifi

We’re hoping to turn this into a regularly-updated digest of current trends, and we’re sure that there’s lots of stuff we have missed.

What challenges are you working on in your museum that we should know about?

Email us at nick@collectionstrust.org.uk to let us know!

What did we miss?

The Digital Agenda in Museums 2013

Business

Learning with Digital Technologies in Museums, Science Centres

Digital technology in museums - case studies

Museums and the digital environment

meSch - Museums in the post-digital age

Digital in British museums

Agenda digital

Challenging the digital transformation in museums

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