The “pivot to digital” provoked by the Covid-19 crisis exposed the need to develop core competencies and confidence in working with digital assets in relation to collections. Skills in aspects such as origination, cataloguing, storage, representation, dissemination, innovation and engagement have all been picked up “on the job”, and museum professionals feel they are under-resourced in training, strategies and tactics to help them reach best practice.
Very little research has been done to systematically respond to the need for ethics related to digital collections. Thus, this area remains underdeveloped in comparison to other aspects of museum work. Online collections, as with other forms of digital production, require continual refinement and innovation in order to stay relevant to audiences and to contribute effectively and responsibly to the museum’s mission of public access and engagement. To that end, museum staff need the tools and space to ethically evaluate needs, minimize harm, propose respectful design solutions and methodologies, direct iterative and participatory development, measure results and evaluate learning from digital initiatives. This toolkit will foster these skills and practices, and more.
About “Innovating with Collections Online”
This toolkit was adapted from the MAP-funded programme “Innovating with Collections Online”, in partnership with Toronto History Museums, the Ontario Museum Association, and Digital Action Research & Transformation (DART). The programme brought together a cohort of five Ontario Museums, working through a variety of issues relating to:
- Collecting Born-Digital Assets (oral histories interviews / other born-digital assets)
- Archiving Born-Digital Collections (digital preservation, right to privacy, access and accessibility)
- Dissemination of Born-Digital Collections (interpreting, programming, exhibiting and innovation)
Through a series of workshops, mentorship, and action-based research experiments, the cohort learned by experience and shared best practices, which helped support the creation of this toolkit.
Participating Museums:
Funding
Funded by the Government of Canada.
