“Even though digital is now in fashion, I would argue there is no digital museum”

Trilce describes that museums still have a way to go in exploiting the potential of technology. “In museums, digital systems are generally used for managing collections’ information administration, but not so much for research.” She highlights the social role that museums can play in the latter: “When people are asked if they trust museums, they answer yes. Yet, if they have a question, they don’t ask museums. They ask google, newspapers or sources of news. I believe it could change. If museums are able to answer questions, they will be seen as facilitators.”

The digitisation of museums is a dynamic process, and several things are changing. “Generally, digital is slowly getting understood as part of the DNA, a basic infrastructure you need. With this vision, you approach things differently, with a team, with a budget…” says Trilce.

Read the full interview with Trilce via Mêtis.

Lectures

Trilce was recently invited to give two lectures at the University of Catania, organised by the research program on Heritage Science and Cultural Production.

• "The future of the museum online" for the PhD program on Humanities. In this lecture, the main idea is that digital museums are all about hybridity and taking the museum beyond the limits of the physical walls to increase participation - the future museum online is personalised, ubiquitous and networked, and future museum services are co-created and co-owned.
• "Policies for a digital heritage infrastructure" for the MA program on Cultural Economics and Policy. The main idea of this lecture was that governments could consider digital heritage as information raw material to stimulate the economy, enabled by an information infrastructure where all museums are connected semantically to ease reuse of digital collection, by persons and by machines.