Objectives

1. Experience

1.1 Exhibition Content Management System [ECMS]

To assist with the development and running of the Museum sites and exhibitions, the Exhibition Content Management System project is currently commencing. This project will digitise all WA Museum sites, including galleries and exhibitions, and also digitise the vast range of artefacts and specimens that make up our collections.

The ECMS will expand to become the centralised collections access portal. This will provide an API to connect all Museum digital platforms together.

The system will allow users to create multi-layered narratives that allow members of the public to explore, share, contribute, collaborate and rethink their world.

1.2 The Museums will deliver inspiring digital learning experiences

Building on the unique experience of the proximity of the collections, the museums will offer digital experiences that cannot be had elsewhere. An integrated and consistent implementation of digital media will be implemented to aid visitors’ interpretation of the museums’ displays, alongside a small number of bespoke, large-scale interventions to bring the displays to life, explain the concepts and engage the visitors to ‘rethink your world”.

A new approach to digital learning resources will be developed that are a go to destination for educators, students and families. Video resources, new digital tools and 3D scans of objects are among the approaches under consideration.

1.3 Social media and third-party platforms

Social media has started to transform WA Museum’s approach to communication and marketing. Social media and use of third-party content platforms, however, are destined to change many more activities at WA Museum, offering new ways to engage with audiences and to distribute content where it will reach new audiences. We believe that there are significant opportunities for social media and new digital platforms to revolutionise the visitor experience as well as transform the practices of learning, research, curating and fundraising within the museum. As with blogging, WAM will seek to embed the use of social media across the organisation.

 

2. Culture

2.1 The Museum's digital activity will be guided by user data

New tools and metrics reports will be implemented to shape digital activity. Annual surveys of web users and on-going analysis of digital in the museums (in particular mobile usage) will be implemented to build knowledge and track trends.

2.2 The Museum's will embed digital activity across the organisation

We believe a move from a Centralised to a Centralised Hybrid digital model provide WA Museum with the best approach to facilitating the transformation to a fully digital organisation. A hybrid model maintains a centralised team that coordinates digital activity across the organisation. But it also has digital expertise in the various business nodes. This ensures that digital best practice becomes organisation wide. It also prevents the central team becoming a bottleneck.

2.3 Staff skills and engagement

New staffing models will need to be developed to ensure that staff are empowered to use digital as part of their work. Training, policies, software and hardware tools, recruitment, induction, professional development and performance management will all be part of the required transformation of the organisation.

2.4 New ways of working

Previously digital initiatives were conceived as objectives for a particular department and were delivered as such. Cross-departmental collaboration, however, will need to become the norm to ensure progress on an institution-wide roadmap of required developments. To facilitate a more networked way of working, a hub-and-spoke model will be adopted, with the digital services team coordinating and collaborating with departments across the organisation.

Policies and guidelines for the use of digital media – in particular, blogs and social media ­– will be collaboratively authored with staff.

2.5 Governance and leadership

Through an extensive process of consultation across the organisation, the digital team will ensure that the full potential for digital is expressed in divisional strategies and then realised. New governance structures will be introduced to balance digital ambitions with available resources, ensure that sustainable approaches are taken, and set the roadmap for change.

2.6 The Museum will share their work openly

A version of the digital strategy and associated policies and guidelines will be published online. A digital blog will be launched to share expertise, progress and in-progress thinking. Where possible, the code will be released under an open source licence for others to build on.

 

3. Collection

3.1 Single collection system

WA Museum is improving the way it provides access to information by moving to a single Collection Management Information System (CMIS) to store all of the Museum's collection data, which is then in turn published on the Museum's website via the Exhibition Management System and the Museum API service http://collections.museum.wa.gov.au/. The ECMS service now present the biggest opportunity to provide access to the collections, save money and will be vital for the delivery of a successful New Museum.

3.2 Digitisation of the collection

The Museum will embark on a 5-year digitisation project to digitise our collection and ensure that all objects on display are available through the WA Museum Exhibition Content Management System (ECMS). The project will last the period of the New Museum development and will assist with the delivery of a modern Museum in 2020. A policy will be created to ensure the relevant tombstone data will will be standardised across to collections data stored. Currently there are 3 major digitisation projects underway Rapid Slide Digitisation, Perth Decant and CMIS system implementation. A number of tools will need to be developed to assist these projects.

3.3 The WA Museum to provide access to the collections online

The current CMIS project will bring our collections online. User-generated content will augment the digitised collection with audience voices and ideas. Design will ensure that these do not overshadow the other uses of the online collection, such as research.

The social value of WA Museum’s knowledge and assets is limited by the institution’s approach to its reuse by audiences. The use of more permissive content licenses – such as Creative Commons – will unlock this value and enable learners to repurpose WA Museum-generated content and use it in their own projects so long as their purpose is non-commercial. In this way WA Museum’s content will enter the wider digital ecosystem and be encountered across the web, amplifying engagement with our collections in accord with WA Museum’s mission.

3.4 The Museum will provide resources that empower audiences

The Museum will enable audience’s reuse of images of collection objects to increase reach and promote the collection. This will be achieved through adoption of permissive, “open” content licenses – such as Creative Commons – that enable non-commercial reuse. As currently, high-resolution images will be available for commercial licensing through Science and Society Picture Library.

3.5 The Museum will invite audiences to contribute to collection research

The museums will establish an online crowdsourcing initiative to allow the public to share their expertise around the collection. It is likely that the first initiative will be around systematic “tagging” the photography collection to aid discovery by search in the forthcoming online collection.

 

4. Narrative content

4.1 The Museums will tell the stories of the collections in a multi-layered multi-voice approach

Through a development of engaging multi-layered  multi-voice based content that focuses on telling the stories of Western Australia its’ peoples identity, culture, environment and sense of place, we will create the go-to online destination for exploring the subjects covered by the Museum’s collections. These narratives will be a major feature of each museum’s website and physical location, enabling them to “own” their content area online and in gallery.

4.2 Digital editorial content

Online editorial content is now the keystone of WA Museum’s digital communications. Using our own media channels – website, social media, email etc. – we are increasingly able to tell our stories effectively, as well as to communicate through high quality content of lasting value. There will be a significantly greater use of multimedia and audience content to promote the experience of visiting the Museums. Staff throughout the organisation will be required to contribute to a digital first and COPE approach to generating museum programs through our digital platforms.

 

5. Infrastructure

5.1 Build common technology platforms for Digital by Default services

Build common technology platforms for Digital by Default services

WA Museum's IT Strategy moves the department from an environment where bespoke, line of business specific solutions are the norm, to one in which a series of strategic platforms are central to delivering our IT capability.

The key principle of the IT Strategy is that functions common to several lines of business should be served from a single platform or ‘machine’ rather than individual solutions being sought for individual business department or site locations.

5.2 Technology platforms

• User Information, Interactions – Website Drupal and CiviCRM

• Collection Information – Collective Access CMIS and Cumulus DAM

• Organisational Health – Pulse Drupal, Pentaho Business Intelligence

• Information Management – Documents & Record management TRIM Content Manager 9, Communication Mattermost, Intranet Drupal

• Museum API – Exhibition Content Management System Drupal and ElasticSearch

The Museum API will site on top of the other technology platforms and be the gateway between the different platforms and our users.