Making impact on a small budget

In the summer of 2014 the paper ‘Democratising the Rijksmuseum’ was published on Europeana Pro. This paper described how the museum opened up their entire digital collection to the public and the results of that. The paper was received with great interest, but also raised questions about how the model of the Rijksmuseum could be applied to smaller museums.

For this reason, we have worked on another case study. This time, with an institution with a far smaller budget: the Livrustkammaren och Skoklosters slott med Stiftelsen Hallwylska museet in Sweden. It has about 50 people on its staff and a limited budget. About 300,000 people visit the three museums combined each year. At the same time, their collection is shared all over the world and receives millions of views.

The paper investigates how they have achieved this and how they worked with their digital collection using limited resources. The paper explores the preparation, the decisions taken, the process and the results. In addition that, the paper will also take a closer look at some of the copyright issues that had to be dealt with and specifically at the difference between the generation of copyright between two- and three-dimensional objects. Finally it also includes the full transcript of the interview we had with Karin Nilsson which is well worth a read.

We hope that this paper can be an inspiration and a useful example for smaller and mid-size institutions. If you have any comments or questions, get in touch!