Digital museums in Pomerania

Innovative, efficient and useful IT solutions can improve the functioning of Pomerania’s museums in the future. The development and management of digital resources of knowledge, commonly known as digitalisation, was the subject of the conference “Digital Museums in Pomerania.” The event was organised by a museum digitalisation group set up in mid 2008 by the National Museum in Gdańsk, the Polish Maritime Museum in Gdańsk, the Malbork Castle Museum and the Gdańsk History Museum. The group was set up to meet the challenges of information technology and to provide an opportunity for the museum community to cooperate in order to work out standards and procedures of digitalisation, use and storage of digital materials and purchase of collection management software. This is the first time such an initiative has been taken here.

The conference, held in our premises at Ołowianka on 30 January 2009, was attended by more than a hundred participants from 20 museums of the region. During the conference, the work to date of the digitalisation group was presented, EU-funding possibilities were discussed and museum collection management software was demonstrated – an international market leader in the field. Directors of the four museums signed a letter of intent, which according to its signatories, should formally mark the beginning of close and fruitful cooperation in the area of collection digitalisation. The initiative should lead to making collections available via the Internet, as provided for by EU guidelines on heritage preservation for the Knowledge Society.