Universal access in 3000 years? The Digital Collections of the State Hermitage Museum

Abstract

Educating and engaging museum audiences in contemporary times is becoming even more important, considering the persistent information society, which has created the need for museums to utilise new methods of communication. Digitisation has therefore become the new instrument for access and preservation in museums. However, the process of digitisation has brought about many challenges for museums, one of the most problematic is deciding what to digitise in the first instance from the wide range of collections. This paper presents a case study of the Hermitage museum and its process of digitising a small part of its large collection, as well as the procedures and strategies regarding the main ..