E-Museums Project. Making Polish Cultural Heritage Accessible Online

Abstract

Digitisation of cultural heritage held by museums in Poland has been ongoing for several years. The process faces many obstacles, but some collections have been digitised and are available online, for example through Europeana and the Google Art Project. However, the majority of digitised objects are still unavailable through the Internet. The National Institute for Museums and Public Collections (Narodowy Instytut Muzealnictwa i Ochrony Zbiorów, NIMOZ, http://www.nimoz.pl ) the state agency under the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland has been put in charge, among others, of digitisation of museum collections in Poland, as well as setting standards for collection management. NIMOZ has proposed a new E-Museums Project. The project aims to contribute to the development of the information society by facilitating access to Polish cultural heritage. The main objectives of the project are: (1) to improve access to cultural heritage housed in Polish museums, (2) to improve collection documentation, and (3) to provide a long-term digital preservation system. It is envisaged to achieve these objectives by: (1) digitising selected museum collections, (2) developing a central repository for museums' digital resources, and (3) creating a joint museum web portal. The project is being proposed under the Operational Programme called “Polska Cyfrowa” (Digital Poland) operating under both, the Polish Ministry of Infrastructure and Development and the Ministry of Administration and Digitisation. The project is scheduled to run from 2016 to 2018. It is currently the main development project in the field of digitisation and cultural heritage of the Polish national museums. The paper presents the current status of the project, its objectives, expected outcomes and future development, as well as the digitisation progress in Polish museums. Essential preparatory work on establishing theoretical and methodological bases for the project is also outlined. The latter is a result of several expert working groups, which had been appointed and coordinated by NIMOZ.