Municipal Museum in Modena

DIGIMUSE ENTER BEST PRACTICES

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Description

Event:

Wiki GLAM project

Target group:

Public audience

Purposes:

• Ensuring access to free knowledge • Launch a participatory digitisation process • Strengthen the web presence of museum heritage

European initiative reference:

n.a.

Info

Italy

Space Needed: Medium

Activity:

The Civic Museum expresses and represents the identity of Modena and its community in its exhibition halls. It is the repository of the city's historical memory and renews it over time in relation to the changing community and in constant relation with it.

Contact

Email museocivico@comune.modena.it Telephone +39 059 203 3101 - 3122

Website

Strengths

Active and participative involvement of the community
Possibility of expanding the number of users through the provision of online cultural content
Open-source platform
High-quality digital reconstruction

Weaknesses

Possible increase in the digital divide

Digital Solutions

Wikimedia platform (open source)

Methodology

The development of a platform with these characteristics involves a technical design component at the graphics and database architecture level, a programming component for the public website (mainly html+ DHTML+ Javascript+PHP), and a programming component for private access (mainly using php with a mysql database) for its administration.

Resources needed and start-up costs

Platform programming: 25,000/30,000 euros
Training course (digital database): from 50 euros per hour

Possible low cost solution

One could also develop a website without programming thanks to platforms such as WordPress. The latter also offers free or almost free packages.
As for training courses, one can find free courses or guides on how to manage a digital database on the Internet.

Transferable innovative principles and methods

1. Enhancing the online heritage in a free and accessible manner

Through the GLAM Wiki project the Civic Museum of Modena makes high-resolution photographs of the works in its possession available under a free CCBY-SA 4.0 licence. The user is therefore free to consult and share the digital collection, as long as the author is always attributed.

2. Making the digitisation of heritage participatory

In order to make the digitised heritage accessible to the public, the GLAM project envisages an active and participatory approach of the community, involving both museum operators, who are given a training course to make them autonomous in implementing the database of digital content, and users, who can contribute by participating in specific events for collecting and sharing cultural material (see link: Wiki Loves Monuments)