Reaping the Benefits of Digitisation: Pilot study exploring revenue generation from digitised collections through technological innovation

In the last decade significant resources have been invested for the digitisation of the collections of a large number of museums and galleries worldwide. In Europe alone, 10 million EUR is annually invested in Europeana (Europeana 2014). However, as we gradually move on from “the start-up phase” of digitisation (Hughes 2004), revenue generation and sustainability must be considered (Hughes 2004). Even beyond digitisation, generating revenue through innovation and in particular “finding new business models to sustain funding” (Simon 2011) ranks amongst museums’ top challenges (Simon 2011). More importantly, despite the significant wealth of digitised assets museums now own, little has been done to investigate ways these institutions could financially benefit from their digitised collections. For art institutions in particular, this has been largely limited to the sale of image licenses, with the fear of losing this revenue posing as one of the key reasons art museums are reluctant to join the Open Content movement (Kapsalis 2016). This paper examines how recent technological advancements, such as image recognition and Print-on-Demand automation, can be utilised to take advantage of the wealth of digitised artworks museums and galleries have in their possession. A pilot study of the proposed solution at the State Museum of Contemporary Art (SMCA) in Thessaloniki, Greece, is covered and the findings are examined. Early feedback indicates that there is a significant potential in the utilisation of the aforementioned technologies for the monetisation of digitised collections. However, challenges such as blending the real-world experience with the digital experience, as well as flattening the learning curve of the technological solution for museum visitors, need to be addressed. Based on the pilot study at SMCA, this paper investigates how emerging technologies can be utilised to facilitate revenue generation for all museums and galleries with digitised collections.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Foteini Valeonti

Andrew Hudson-Smith

Melissa Terras

Chrysanthi Zarkali

Conference

Publication date: July 2018

Publication date (Print): July 2018

Pages: 56-63

Affiliations

[0001]University College London

London, UK

[0002]University of Edinburgh

Edinburgh, UK

[0003]SMCA

Thessaloniki, Greece

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/EVA2018.11

SO-VID: 72172cf4-9b91-46cc-a494-bf95694a8610

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts

Conference acronym: EVA

Conference number:

Conference location: London, UK

Conference date: 9 - 13 July 2018

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/EVA2018.11

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

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Comments

Comment on this article

[1] T. Bradshaw 2011 Internet start-up draws in art world The Financial Times 22 July 2011 http://www.ft.com/content/8ee39248-b485-11e0-a21d-00144feabdc0 (retrieved 15 March 2018)

[2] T. Dafoe 2017 The Biggest Obstacles Museum Directors Face Today Blouin Artinfo 16 March 2017 http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/2009807/the-biggest-obstacles-museum-directors-face-today (retrieved 15 March 2018)

[3] M. DeeganS. Tanner 2002 Digital Futures: Strategies for the information age. Neal-Schuman Publishers

[4] Europeana 2014 Europeana Strategy 2015–2020 http://pro.europeana.eu/files/Europeana_Professional/Publications/EuropeanaStrategy2020.pdf (retrieved 15 March 2018)

[5] L. Green 1016 What we know about mobile experiences in Museums after 6 years of research Medium 19 August 2016 http://medium.com/frankly-green-webb/what-we-know-about-mobile-experiences-in-museums-after-6-years-of-research-42117def2c49 (retrieved 19 March 2018)

[6] B. Grosvenor 2017 The reproduction fee hustle The Art Newspaper 20 November 2017 http://www.theartnewspaper.com/blog/the-reproduction-fee-hustle (retrieved 15 March 2018)

[7] B. Grosvenor 2018 How abolishing museum image fees could boost audiences The Art Newspaper 14 February 2018 http://www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/diary-of-an-art-historian-look-beyond-the-bottom-line (retrieved 15 March 2018)

[8] L. M. Hughes, 2004 Digitizing Collections: Strategic issues for the information manager Facet Publishing

[9] ICOM 2007 Museum Definition http://icom.museum/the-vision/museum-definition/ (retrieved 15 March 2018)

[10] E. Kapsalis 2016 The Impact of Open Access on Galleries, Libraries, Museums, & Archives http://siarchives.si.edu/sites/default/files/pdfs/2016_03_10_OpenCollections_Public.pdf (retrieved 15 March 2018)

[11] M. Larsson 2004 The Limits of Business Development and Economic Growth Palgrave Macmillan

[12] K. Lindqvist 2012 Museum Finances: Challenges beyond Economic Crises Museum Management and Curatorship 27 1 1 15

[13] L. MannG. Tung 2015 A new look at an old friend: Reevaluating the Met's audio-guide service MW2015: Museums and the Web 2015 http://mw2015.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/a-new-look-at-an-old-friend-re-evaluating-the-mets-audio-guide-service/ (retrieved 15 March 2018)

[14] I. Macquisten 2017 UK museums' right to charge image fees is called into question The Art Newspaper 28 November 2017 http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/museums-right-to-charge-image-fees-is-called-into-question (retrieved 15 March 2018)

[15] M. Moore 2017 Museum fees are killing art history, say academics The Times, 6. November 2017 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/museum-fees-are-killing-art-history-say-academics-qhfwmdws6 (retrieved 15 March 2018

[16] D. NicholsonG. Macgregor 2003 “NOF‐Digi”: putting UK culture online OCLC Systems & Services: International Digital Library Perspectives 19 3 96 99

[17] J. Pes 2017 What Are the Biggest Challenges Facing UK Museums? Brexit and Budget Cuts, New Report Says artnet news 26 November 2017 http://news.artnet.com/art-world/englands-museums-face-brexit-on-top-of-big-budget-cuts-but-report-looks-on-bright-side-1153148 (retrieved 15 March 2018

[18] Oxford Dictionaries 2016 accessibility. http://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/accessibility (retrieved 15 March 2018

[19] M. Petrie 2013 Dear museums: the time is right to embrace mobile The Guardian 26 May 2013 http://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2013/may/31/museums-mobile-visitors (retrieved 15 March 2018

[20] Z. Rodionova 2016 UK museums to introduce entrance fees in 2016 following Government cuts Independent 26 January 2016 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-museums-to-introduce-entrance-fees-in-2016-following-government-cuts-a6809806.html (retrieved 15 March 2018

[21] N. Simon, 2011 What Are the Most Important Problems in Our Field? Museum 2.0 26 October 2011 http://museumtwo.blogspot.fr/2011/10/what-are-most-important-problems-in-our.html (retrieved 15 March 2018

[22] S. Tanner 2004 Reproduction charging models & rights policy for digital images in American art museums: A Mellon Foundation funded study http://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/48081293/USMuseum_SimonTanner.pdf (retrieved 15 March 2018

[23] M. Terras 2010 Digital curiosities: resource creation via amateur digitization Literary and Linguistic Computing 25 4 425 438

[24] M. Terras 2012 Digitisation and Digital Resources in the Humanities M. TerrasC. WarwickJ. Nyhan (eds.) Digital Humanities in Practice 47 70

[25] M. Terras 2015 Opening Access to collections: the making and using of open digitised cultural content Online Information Review 39 5 733 752

[26] M. Wasson 2013 ASP. NET – Single-Page Applications: Build Modern, Responsive Web Apps with ASP. NET MSDN Magazine 28 11. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dn463786.aspx (retrieved 15 March 2018

[27] Zenith Media 2017 Smartphone penetration to reach 66% in 2018 http://www.zenithmedia.com/smartphone-penetration-reach-66-2018/ (retrieved 15 March 2018

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