Museums

In this chapter, we provide an overview of the museum data, a detailed description of certain survey question responses by museum size, and a summary of comparisons with data from the 2001 survey.

1.1 Technology Overview

• Availability of funding: Sixty-three percent of all museums reported having funding for technology in the past 12 months. In the next 12 months, 62.3 percent of all museums plan to receive technology funding.
• Adequacy of technology funding: A total of 60.4 percent of museums reported that the majority of their technology needs are not met by current funding.
• Maintaining and adding technologies: All museums, regardless of size, agree that their institutions are able to maintain their current levels of technology, but they are neutral on their institutions’ ability to add new uses of technology to meet evolving needs.
• Technology capacity: This includes equipment, software, connectivity, skills and expertise, and staffing. More than half of the museums (54.8%) reported that they have the technology capacity to meet or almost meet their missions.
• Technologies in use:
• Basic computer technologies (e-mail, desktop computers, and office productivity software) are pervasive, used by at least 91.6 percent of museums.
• 88 percent of museums have a Web site.
• Broadband Internet connections are more prevalent in large museums (84.9%) than small ones (39%). Of the large museums, 31.5 percent use modems (dial-up) for Internet access, while 50 percent of small museums use modems.
• Large and small museums significantly differ in their use of local area networks (LANs): 90.3 percent of large museums have LANs, but only 29.6 percent of small museums have them.
• Three-fourths (75.3%) of museums used between 6 and 15 technologies in the past 12 months
• Staff for technology activities: Across all museums, 23.4 percent have ”the right amount” of staff to accomplish their technology activities, while 65.9 percent of museums reported that they do not have enough skilled staff for these activities. Of the large museums, only 17.4 percent have sufficient staff for technology activities, while the majority (76.1%) do not have enough staff for these activities.
• Needs assessment: Only 12 percent of museums conduct assessments of user or visitor needs for technology-supported services or experiences.
  

1.2 Digitization overview

• Digitization policies: In general, more large museums have digitization policies than small and medium museums. However, even among large museums, only 34 percent or less have policies in place related to specific topic areas. For all museums, the topics that were most likely to have associated policies were access (23.4% of museums have policies related to access), digital format (21.5%), materials to be digitized (21.4%), preservation (19.4%), and security (19.3%). The topics least likely to have associated policies were metadata (7.3% of museums), conversion of digital files to next-generation formats (7.6%), and evaluation (8.6%).
• Funding for digitization activities: More large museums (52.2%) had funding to support their digitization activities in the past 12 months than did medium and small museums (38.3 and 28.5%, respectively). In general, the majority of museums (54.2%) did not have digitization funds. Looking toward the next 12 months, 40.3 percent of all museums planned to obtain funding to support their digitization activities.
• Digitization priorities: Digitizing photographs was a top priority for 56.2 percent of all museums; digitizing images of items in their collections was important to 53 percent; and digitizing historical documents/archives was a top priority for 45.1 percent of all museums.
• Materials and images digitized: Despite what the museums reported about digitization funding, 74.4 percent of them reported that they digitized from 1 to 5,000 images in the past 12 months; however, nearly half of all museums (46.4%) digitized only 1 to 500 images .
• Materials or images still to be digitized: Only 9.2 percent of museums reported they have no more images to digitize. Fifteen percent of all museums had between 1 and 500 items to digitize, and 16.5 percent had more than 25,000 items still to digitize.
• Undertaking digitization activities: Among all museums, 55.9 percent rely on training current staff to conduct digitization activities; 35.4 percent use volunteers; 14 percent reassign current staff to digitization tasks; 14.1 percent use contractual staff; 8.8 percent use commercial vendors off-site; and 4.5 percent conduct their digitization activities at other institutions’ digitization centers.
• Making digital images available: Overall, 55.7 percent of museums make some or all of their digital images available to the public. Access is available via the Web at 56.2 percent of museums and on-site at 38.8 percent of museums. Over half of museums (54.5%) report that the general public (i.e., those with Internet access) is the target audience for whom they provide access to digital images; 53.4 percent report that the target audience for their digital images is museum staff; and 44.2 percent report that the target audience is outside researchers and scholars.
• Needs assessment: Only 10.6 percent of museums conduct assessments of user or visitor needs for digitized materials and images.
• Collaboration: When museums collaborate to digitize materials, 39.2 percent turn to historical societies; 38 percent collaborate with other museums; 32.9 percent collaborate with universities and colleges; and 30.4 percent collaborate with academic libraries.
• Capability for digitization activities: On a scale of 1 (deficient) to 5 (fully capable), museums rated themselves highest on staff skills (3.0) and equipment and software (2.6); the category that ranked lowest was funding (1.8). Smaller museums rated their digitization capability lower in almost every category than did medium and large museums.
• Hindrances to digitization: On a scale of 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree), museums rated a variety of hindrances to digitization capabilities. Among these, having too little staff time (1.6), having too little funding (1.6), and having other projects with higher priorities (1.7) were rated as the greatest hindrances to digitization activities. Not having collections worth digitizing (4.1) and having a management that is unaware of the benefits of digitization (3.6) were least likely to be regarded as hindrances.

This section highlights the difference between small, medium, and large museums based on their budget size and discusses issues related to technology and digitization, comparing how these issues differ among the three size categories.To determine the small, medium, and large categories, we used the museum survey question B on museum annual budget size.

Note: Data are based on responses to survey question B; respondents were asked to select only one option.

2.1 Demographics

A total of 479 museums participated in the survey. However, not all participants responded to every question, so the numbers in the tables below might be slightly lower than 479. In addition, some tables are broken down by size of museum while others are presented on the whole, which may result in different sample sizes for different tables.

Type of Museum

Figure 2 shows the types of museums participating in the survey. The largest participating group was history museums (30.9%), followed by historic houses/sites (19.6%), and art museums (15.8%).

Note: Data are based on responses to survey question A; respondents were asked to select only one option.

* “Other” encompasses the following types of museums: archaeological museum, architectural museum, art and history museum, culturally specific museum, historical society, military museum, tribal museum, and university gallery.

Budget

Figure 3 shows the annual budget for museums. Almost half of all museums reported a budget of less than $250,000, while nearly one-fifth reported a budget of $1 million to $5 million.

Note: Data are based on responses to survey question B; respondents were asked to select only one option.

Staff Size

Figure 4 shows museum staff size. More than half of the museums participating in the survey had fewer than five full-time staff.

Note: Data are based on responses to survey question C; respondents were asked to select only one option.

2.2 Technology

Technology Funding

Sixty-three percent of all museums reported having funding for technology in the past 12 months. In the next 12 months, 62.6% of all museums plan to receive technology funding.

Note: Data are based on responses to survey questions 1 and 2; respondents were asked to select only one option.

Adequate Funding of Technology Needs

Nearly 40 percent of all museums say that current funding meets 51 percent or more of their technology needs. However, 60.4 percent of museums report that current funding meets only 50 percent or less of their technology needs. Of the small museums, 20.2 percent report that none (0%) of their technology needs is met.

Note: Data are based on responses to survey question B; respondents were asked to select only one option.

Maintaining and Adding Technology

Overall, museums are positive about their institutions’ ability to maintain their current levels of technology, but they are more negative about their institutions’ ability to add new uses of technology to meet evolving needs. Figure 7 shows the mean ratings of an institution’s ability to maintain or add technology based on a 5-point scale, with “1” meaning strongly agree and “5” meaning strongly disagree. Therefore, ratings less than 2.5 tend to indicate agreement, and ratings greater than 2.5 tend to indicate disagreement.

Note: Data are based on responses to survey question 4. The scale for this question was 1, meaning strongly agree, to 5, meaning strongly disagree.

Extent of Technology Capacity

One-fourth of museums with small budgets have the technology capacity necessary to meet their missions, while more than 40 percent of museums with large budgets cannot completely fulfill their missions with their current technology capacity.

Note: Data are based on survey question 5; respondents were asked to select only one option.

Technologies Used in Past 12 Months

Almost all museums, regardless of size, are using desktop computers (93.7%), e-mail (92.3%), office productivity software (91.6%), and Web sites for their institutions (88.0%). Small and medium museums were more likely to use modems (dial-up access) to connect to the Internet than large museums: 50 percent of small and 50.4 percent of medium museums used modems, compared with only 31.5 percent of large museums. Conversely, large museums were much more likely to use broadband Internet connection than small museums and considerably more likely than medium museums: 84.9 percent of large museums used broadband, compared with 39.0 percent of small museums and 72.7 percent of medium museums. Large museums were also much more likely to use a LAN (local area network) than small museums: 90.3 percent of large museums used LANs, compared with 29.6 percent of small museums.

Note: Data are based on responses to survey question 6; respondents were asked to select all that apply.

Three-fourths (75.3%) of museums used between 6 and 15 technologies in the past 12 months.

Note: Data are based on responses to survey question 6; respondents were asked to select all that apply.

Staff Capabilities

More medium museums (28.8%) have the right number of skilled staff to accomplish their technology activities than both small (22.9%) and large (17.4%) museums. Overall, the majority of museums (65.9%) do not have enough skilled staff to accomplish their technology activities.

Note: Data are based on survey question 5; respondents were asked to select only one option.

Needs Assessments

A higher number of large and medium museums (16.8 and 13.6%, respectively) conduct assessments of user or visitor needs for technology-supported services or experiences at their institutions than small museums (8.5%). Overall, however, the majority of museums (80.3%) do not conduct assessments of user or visitor needs for technology-supported services or experiences at their institutions.

Note: Data are based on responses to survey question 12; respondents were asked to select only one option.

2.3 Digitization

Digitization Policies

Overall, a higher number of large museums have digitization policies in place than medium or small museums. The most prevalent digitization policies are those for access (23.4% of museums have access policies), digital format (21.5%), and materials to be digitized (21.4%). The least prevalent policies include those for metadata (7.3%) and conversion of digital files to next-generation formats (7.6%). Overall, however, the data show that even the most prevalent policies are in place in less than 25 percent of all museums.

Note: Data are based on responses to survey question 16; respondents were asked to select all that apply.

Digitization Funding

A higher number of large museums (52.2%) had funding to support their digitization activities in the past 12 months than did medium and small museums (38.3 and 28.5%, respectively). In general, the majority (54.2%) of museums did not have digitization funds.

Note: Data are based on responses to survey question 18; respondents were asked to select only one option.

Materials for Digitization

Overall, 10.9 percent of museums have been digitizing photographs, 9.1 percent have been digitizing images of items in their collections, 8.4 percent have been digitizing education and training materials about their collections, and 8.4 percent have been digitizing historical documents/archives.

Note: Data are based on responses to survey question 20; respondents were asked to select all that apply.

Primary Digitization Priorities

Of the museums surveyed, the three highest digitization priorities were as follows:

• Photographs: 56.2 percent of all museums considered this a digitization priority.
• Images of items in the collections: 53.0 percent identified this category as a digitization priority.
• Historical documents/archives: 45.1 percent of all museums considered this a priority.

Note: Data are based on responses to survey question 22; respondents were asked to select their institution’s top three priorities.

Number of Digital Materials Created in the Past 12 Months

Almost three-quarters (74.4%) of museums digitized between 1 and 5,000 images in the past 12 months.

Note: Data are based on responses to survey question 23; respondents were asked to select only one option.

Number of Additional Images Remaining to Be Digitized

Overall, 66.9 percent of all museums have 1,001 to 25,000 or more digital materials or images left to be digitized. Only 9.2 percent of museums overall report that they have no materials or images left to digitize.

Note: Data are based on survey question 24; respondents were asked to select only one option.

Undertaking Digitization Activities

Overall, museums undertake their digitization activities by the following:

• Training current staff to perform these activities: 55.9 percent use this means.
• Having volunteers perform these activities: 35.4 percent use this means.
• Reassigning current staff to perform these activities: 14.9 percent use this means.
• Hiring contractual staff to perform these activities in-house: 14.1 percent use this means.

Note: Data are based on responses to survey question 26; respondents were asked to select all that apply.

The Availability of Digital Image Collections to the Public

Overall, 55.7 percent of museums make some or all of their digital image collections available to the public. Almost three-fourths (73.6%) of museums with large budgets make their digital image collections available to the public, whereas only 58.7 percent of museums with medium budgets and 44.6 percent of museums with small budgets make their digital image collections available to the public.