The document discusses how museums can survive and succeed in the digital world. It argues that museums should not view digital strategies as separate, but should have an overall strategy that incorporates how modern audiences experience culture. A museum's mission statement, policies, staff, services, business model, communications, facilities, and culture all need to support this overall strategy and be relevant to how people engage with information today. By focusing on serving today's digital, mobile, and socially connected consumers and making the most of opportunities in the digital space, museums can remain great cultural institutions for current and future audiences.
31. MISSION
The Mission Statement of your
museum needs to state how what you
do is relevant and useful to the way
the world is now...
You don’t need a separate Digital
Strategy – you need a Strategy that
encompasses the way modern
consumers experience culture.
32. POLICIES
Your institutional policies (especially
those around copyright & re-use) need
actively to support your Mission.
If your Mission is commercial, then lock
your licenses down. If your Mission is
public, then open them up.
If your Mission is a messy combination
of the two, don’t expect Copyright to
sort it out.
33. STAFF
If your people are not digitally-literate,
your organisation won’t be either.
34. SERVICES
Your customers are physical, digital,
intellectual, mobile and social.
So that’s what your services should be.
37. COLLECTIONS
Collections are physical, digital and
intellectual.
That stuff you do with physical
collections (documentation,
conservation, curatorship, research,
movement, prioritisation)?
That’s what you need to do with your
digital collections.
38. FACILITIES
Your customers are connected. If you
give them electricity, wifi, coffee &
space, they will love you more.
(And don’t agonise about whether a
visitor looking at a screen is still a
visitor – they’re just as engaged as one
standing in front of a painting, possibly
more so)
39. CULTURE
Under all the ‘Digital’ stuff, the real
change is cultural. Children and young
people are modelling the world they
demand to live in, which includes art,
solitude, reflection and expertise.
An open, reflective, playful and
supportive culture for your museum
will lead to experiences that people
love.
40. A great digital museum is simply
a great museum that is designed
around the way people live now.