Digital Asset Management for Museums

Our cultural heritage institutions live today in a world that persistently blends the alternating currents of the known and "touchable" world with an immediate and intimate digital unfolding with shapes and intentions beyond what we can know. These digital twins may start as just that – twins – but often quickly become different. A scan of a sculpture can be used for research, to deepen a visitor's sight of what's underneath, become a model for a licensed derivative destined for the gift shop, or help curators plan an exhibition. Our museum holdings throughout the world require careful management – from access, to storage, to conservation, and they create the wonder we experience in the hands of gifted museum staff. Our museums’ digital assets demand the same level of attention, concern, legacy preservation as they embrace our minds and infuse experience from the invisible reach of "ones and zeroes" made manifest and all around us. This is the realization at the core of Digital Asset Management for Museums. The chapters in this book will guide readers through strategies for unlocking an asset’s potential, implementing digital assets into cultural institutions successfully, managing potential failures in implementation, and training museum staff to utilize digital assets effectively. Digital asset management strategies consider the ever-evolving nature of technology, which makes this book’s approach relevant to the needs of cultural institutions today as well as to institutions’ needs for the future.