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Under the new normal of the pandemic, an analysis of trends in the digitalization of museums worldwide.

Summary : The digitalization of museums has become the new normal in the post-pandemic era.

2022-08-03

I. Museum digitalization has become the new normal in the post-pandemic era

1.The demand for museum digitalization has intensified

"13th Five-Year Plan" period, a new museum was added on average every two days in China, and one museum was available for every 250,000 people. By the end of 2021, the total number of registered museums nationwide had reached 6,183. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and spread globally, making contactless and smart services basic attributes of economic life, cultural education, and social management. Consequently, museum communication and services increasingly shifted online. Against the backdrop of the pandemic in 2020, museums were generally closed for long periods, yet China still launched over 29,000 exhibitions, more than 225,000 educational activities, received 540 million visits, and hundreds of millions of online visitors.

From 2020 to 2021, the International Council of Museums(The International Council of Museums, abbreviated asICOM) conducted3 global surveys on museums and the COVID-19 pandemic, and the reports presented the international landscape and basic trends of museum digital activities in the past two years.

In March 2020, the "Survey Report on Museums, Museum Professionals, and the COVID-19 Pandemic" released by ICOM showed that85,000 museums worldwide were forced to close due to the pandemic, of which approximately13% might close permanently. The American Alliance of Museums released the "National Survey on the Impact of COVID-19 on American Museums" in July 2020, which disclosed that due to financial problems related to the pandemic, one-third of cultural and museum institutions across the United States might close permanently. 2.International Trends in the Application of Digital Technology in Museums According to the third survey data of ICOM in May 2021, museums began to explore the application of digital technology under the "new normal" of the pandemic, and have gradually established various digital communication channels. First, regarding the adjustments in digitalization strategies of museums. Among the surveyed museums, from September 2020 to May 2021, the changes were: "re-examining digital strategies" increased from 76.6% to 83.4%; "adding dedicated staff" increased from 38.7% to 41.9%; "increasing digital budgets" increased from 43.2% to 52.1%; "expanding digital service content" increased from 74.8% to 78.6%; "strengthening staff training" increased from 53.8% to 64.6%. Second, from the perspective of human resource investment in museum digital activities. The proportions of museums with full-time digital staff in April 2020, September 2020, and May 2021 were 26.1%, 21.8%, and 21.9%, respectively; the proportions of those with part-time digital staff at these three time points were 55.7%, 56.8%, and 61.0%, respectively, showing a gradual increase within less than a year; the proportions of those without dedicated digital staff at the three time points were 18.3%, 21.5%, and 17.1%, respectively. From the data, a trend can be observed: the proportion of staff engaged in part-time digital work is increasing, indicating that the allocation of human resources in museums is shifting towards communication and digital activities, while the proportion of museums without any dedicated digital staff has decreased.Third, looking at the proportion of communication and digitalization activities in the total museum budget. Among the surveyed museums, those whose budget for communication and digitalization activities exceeded 10% of the total budget accounted for 11.8%, 12.0%, and 13.4% in April 2020, September 2020, and May 2021, respectively; those between 6%-10% accounted for 11.0%, 14.9%, and 15.6% at the three time points, respectively; those between 1%-5% accounted for 23.8%, 29.4%, and 20.8% at the three time points, respectively; and those with less than 1% accounted for 17.8%, 19.7%, and 24.2% at the three time points, respectively. It can be seen that, despite the deteriorating financial situation, the proportion of museum budgets planned for digital and communication activities increased by 6.2%.

Fourth, from the perspective of various online activities of museums. Among the surveyed museums, various online activities have increased compared to before the pandemic. By activity type: In April 2020, September 2020, and May 2021, the proportions of online collections were 18.0%, 34%, and 32% respectively; online exhibitions were 16.4%, 16.1%, and 22.0% respectively; live streaming of events accounted for 19.1%, 21.8%, and 28.1% respectively; social media usage accounted for 47.5%, 41.9%, and 53.4% respectively. In May 2021, among museums that started online activities after closing, the proportions of online collections, online exhibitions, live streaming of events, and social media usage were 9.7%, 17.4%, 26.5%, and 3.8% respectively.

Figure  ICOM Key data from the global museum survey conducted by ICOM from April 2020 to May 2021.

II. The Necessity of Digital Construction from the Dual Perspectives of Museums and Audiences

From the perspective of museums serving audiences, emerging technological means can digitize precious cultural relics, accurately restore them to virtual or real scenes through digital devices, and also enable real-time interaction between various groups online and offline.

The application of digital technologies such as in China's museum sector can be traced back to the late 1990s. For example, the Henan Museum and the Shanghai Museum, in addition to establishing their official museum websites, also took the lead in attempting digital processing of their collections, allowing audiences to browse collection information and flat images of collections online.

After entering the 21st century, museum digital technology gradually shifted from a single online product to a combination of online and offline products. Specific usage scenarios include museum exhibitions, museum education, museum services, and museum cultural and creative design. Representative technologies include 3D scanning /3D printing, virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality (AR) technology, and mobile client development technology.

From the perspective of audience feedback to museums, museum digital technology provides a large amount of audience feedback data and personalized visitor information, thereby giving museums the opportunity to customize personalized guided tour services for audiences. In the context of big data, museums can understand the needs of different visitors, and through "context-aware system", analyze and extract visitors' personalized preferences through backend algorithms, and once summarized to form "homogeneous" groups, thereby providing group customized services and more accurate and appropriate guided tour content.

This approach can be applied to the curation and installation of museum exhibitions. It can combine the positioning function of visitors' handheld devices to collect information such as visitors' exhibition routes and the time spent in front of each display case, thereby helping to optimize the zoning of museum exhibition halls, circulation design, visitor navigation, time-based and flow-based diversion, and the scheduled and fixed-position work of museum staff, providing first-hand data to help museums make real-time adjustments and plan improvements, and better provide customized services to visitors.

Figure2 Schematic diagram of digital construction from the bidirectional perspective of museums and audiences

Third, China attaches great importance to the digital construction of museums

One of the core contents of the important series of expositions on cultural relics work is to make cultural relics"live"up. And making cultural relics"live"up naturally cannot be separated from the digitalization of cultural relics and the digital construction of museums.

The "Internet+Chinese Civilization" Three-Year Action Plan, jointly issued by the National Cultural Heritage Administration and the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments in 2016, proposed to encourage the digital display and utilization of cultural relics, and encourage qualified cultural relics and museums to carry out smart museum work.

The "Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035" of the People's Republic of China, released in March 2021, mentioned "museum digitalization" twice.

In May 2021, the National Cultural Heritage Administration and eight other central departments jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Reform and Development of Museums"(hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), which proposed the strategic goal of basically building China into a world museum powerhouse by 2035. The Opinions contain many statements on the construction of smart museums and related work, clearly pointing out that we should "vigorously develop smart museums, with business needs as the core and modern science and technology as the support, gradually realizing smart services, smart conservation, and smart management".

In November 2021, the "14th Five-Year" Plan for Cultural Relics Protection and Scientific and Technological Innovation was officially issued. This is the first time that scientific and technological innovation has been included in the title, and a "full-chain" layout has been made for enhancing the innovation capability of cultural relics science and technology. The text respectively mentions the need to "accelerate the digitization of museum collections" and "promote the development of online digital experience products in museums, providing new cultural tourism services such as immersive experiences, virtual exhibition halls, and high-definition live streaming". Figure

3 
Word cloud of the "

" Plan for Cultural Relics Protection and Scientific and Technological Innovation In May 2022, the "Opinions on Promoting the Implementation of the National Cultural Digitization Strategy" issued by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council clarified that by the end of the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the cultural digitization infrastructure and service platform will be basically completed, forming a cultural service supply system with online and offline interactive integration and three-dimensional coverage. By 2035, a national cultural big data system with physical distribution, logical correlation, fast linking, efficient search, comprehensive sharing, and key integration will be built, presenting the full panorama of Chinese culture and sharing the achievements of Chinese cultural digitization with all the people. The value and role of museum digital construction in the national cultural digitization strategy should not be underestimated. Article from   CRI Online