Introduction

UK museums have experienced an interesting and sometimes frustrating journey since the arrival of affordable digitization technology. Until very recently, the impact and value of museum collections, especially for the research community, has not been fully recognized, and this has tended to hamper the speed and extent of museum digitization projects. Gradually, museums have not only generated a significant body of digital content themselves but have also become partners in higher-education-funded research projects with digital outputs, encouraging wider awareness not only of the value of their collections but also of the expertise they can contribute to the creation of research resources.

Despite this, there is still a great deal of unexploited potential. A recent study by the Comité des Sages (20011) on the online accessibility of Europe's digital cultural heritage identifies the museum sector as an area requiring greater investment. The physical characteristics of many museum artefacts have also tended to inhibit digitization. Frail materials, large objects, collections housed in off-site stores, or items of costume that need three-dimensional mounting to convey a true picture of their purpose and design all present time-consuming challenges for digitization that add to project costs.

This chapter will present a case study based on the experiences of digitization at one specific organization, my own, followed by ‘the bigger picture’, some more generalized perspectives on the implementation of digitization within UK museums as a whole.

Case study: A learning journey

New Opportunities Fund – the NOF-Digitise programme

Introduction

The V&A Museum's Department of Theatre and Performance is by no means a leader in the field of digitization but has been a very active player, with a track record stretching over ten years – almost back to prehistory in digitization terms.

In common with many UK heritage organizations, the journey started in the late 1990s when the V…A Department of Theatre and Performance was still known as the Theatre Museum, a branch of the V…A, located in its own premises in London's Covent Garden. Although dependent on the parent organization for many of its support services (IT, human resources (HR), conservation, etc.) it maintained its own website, which at the time, in common with the websites of most UK museums, was the responsibility of its marketing department, and was designed primarily as a means of attracting visitors to the museum building.