Tuesday, August 15, 2006

The Museum and the Media Divide

W. Brent Seales and George V. Landon, "The Museum and the Media Divide: Building and Using Digital Collections at the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena," in D-Lib Magazine, vol 11, May 2005.

Abstract:
By digitizing physical holdings, museums have an important opportunity to provide patrons unprecedented access to manifold media. Digitization of existing collections, which is the museum's form of the content creation problem, is a crucial and technically challenging step in continuing to narrow the digital divide between the patron's desire for rich multi-media information and what the museum actually provides. We present a case study of the issues involved in executing a digital content creation program in partnership with the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena. We focus on the challenges involved in acquiring, organizing and accessing the collections to make them meaningfully available within typical budgetary and technical constraints.

Available Online