Digitization: worker perspectives at R1 university art museums

Authors:

• Mari Pantaleo, Master of Arts in Museology
• Chair: Lane Eagles
• Tasia Jonhson
• Chance Hunt

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Abstract:

While not a new phenomenon, “digitization” has forcefully inserted itself into conversations about accessibility within the last few years, due especially to the changing landscape of school and work that began in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of working from home, and the expansion of online spaces. All museums are spaces that have the potential to be affected by larger technological changes, but not all types of museums have been a part of the conversation, specifically, art museums on R1 university campuses. The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the current state of digitization at R1 university art museums, based on the perceptions of staff members. Museum staff working in collections-related positions at five public universities have been surveyed to understand what they see as the place of digitization in their institution, how their institution supports digitization, who they see as being affected by digitization efforts, and what their role and the role of their colleagues is concerning digitization efforts at their specific organizations. To answer these questions, workers at R1 university art museums were surveyed to gauge their beliefs about their work specifically, and the role they see digitization having more generally at their institutions. Outside of data from workers, data on the institution was collected as well. This includes the number of students at the university, the size of the institutions collection, whether the museum’s mission finds research to be important, and a rating. Ratings were based on a point system and were intended to draw attention to the actual accessibility of the public digital collection, which may or may not correspond to the responses of staff. This study is important because it attempts to bring attention to a blind spot in accessibility to the institution’s collections. While it can be simple to assume that making more information available to the public is a net good, without deeper inspection of these “obvious truths,” it is impossible to know for sure whether efforts may ultimately be in the museum’s best interest. This study demonstrates several things. First, it shows that museum workers, while they may work at institutions of similar sizes and work in positions that share similarities with each other, do not all agree on the role of digitization, and they show that their institutions take different stances on the questions presented. There seems to be a general feeling that digitization is useful, or, at the very least, unavoidable, but there does not seem to be wide support from the institutions to expand digitization efforts. A well-planned and robust digital collection can grant research access to students who may not be able to visit the museum in person, and the online collection can even provide information that may not be accessible in person, like detailed metadata or the ability to zoom in on an artwork's physical details. With all of this in mind, it is useful to see this study as a first step that helps to highlight the gaps in an area of museum work that is only becoming more and more prominent as the world changes.