The elements of museum digitization procedure: a case study of Lithuanian museums

ABSTRACT

Digital technologies are no longer the newest innovative invention but have become daily necessities in museums. This article explores museums’ digitalization elements and their association with other museum activities in Lithuania in order to understand technology usage in museums’ daily activities. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine Lithuanian national and state museums, and qualitative content analysis was adopted for data analysis. The main elements related to digitization in the museum are operations, human resources, organizational structure, objectives, and motives. In Lithuanian national-level museums, digitization did not directly replace existing museum activities nor establish a new policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Museum
• Lithuania
• digitization
• digital cultural heritage
• LIMIS

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The current ICOM definition was adopted by the 22^nd General Assembly in Vienna in 2007. ICOM had a plan to vote on a new definition at the 2019 ICOM General Conference in Kyoto. Still, the Extraordinary General Assembly has decided to postpone the vote (ICOM 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aya Kimura

Aya Kimura is a Researcher at Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, Japan. Currently, her research is focused on digitization at Lithuanian museums. She received Ph.D. in Museum Studies from Ochanomizu University (Tokyo, Japan) and a master’s degree in Cultural Policy from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (Tokyo, Japan). She was honored to receive Lithuanian State Scholarships for short-term study in 2017, 2018, and 2019. Besides museum studies, her primary academic interests are digital cultural heritage, cultural policy, and architecture history.