Consider the value of and need for digitisation

Why do you want to digitise and publish -part of- your collection?

Digitisation is valuable for many purposes, such as reaching a larger audience, broadening your collection by adding parts of your collection that are unavailable for your visitors now (f.i. because they are stored in depot or very fragile), for conservation and preservation, reproduction, research, education, exploration, and creative or tourism-related reuses.

Share your collection, historical building, archaeological site with the world and attract more visitors to your website and your museum, library etc.

Digitisation helps to highlight and disseminate your cultural heritage collections to the world. It can provide worldwide virtual access to historical and unique materials, fragile items that may not be available for onsite access, and hidden treasures that also deserves use for scholarly or publication purposes. Additionally, digitisation may be especially helpful to people with disabilities or special needs, who may not have the physical capabilities and/or resources to visit your institution for research.

Europeana (the European Common DataSpace for Cultural Heritage) can provide you with a (free) platform to share your collection within Europe and even worldwide. NB. Europeana provides search facilities, previews and links to items in your digital collection, but you will need to host your own digital collection!

Add context and tell stories by connecting to other digital heritage collections Digitisation can also make it possible to relate to other (digitally) available collections, documents, materials, sites and people. This opens up opportunities to tell a story and add context to your collections. Europeana can provide opportunities to link to other collections, objects, archival and audio/visual materials and sites to create engaging stories and virtual visits.

Preserve your collection, materials, site for future generations Digitisation can contribute to better protection of physical cultural heritage sites and objects by enabling virtual visits, research or discovery using digitised materials instead of physical visits and direct handling.

Digitisation may save your collections or heritage site for future generations in a digital form, even if the collection has been split up, or the physical objects or the heritage site have been lost. NB. you will need to consider digital preservation in the long term to keep your digital collection or site findable and accessible in the future.

Read more about the value of and need for digitisation in “Further reading” at the end of this chapter.