 Hello, everybody, and welcome to today's session. We apologize for the delay. That was an issue with the phone bridge. We were trying to connect from. And we are now underway. Without further delay, I'm going to pass the audio off to your host, Jenny, your heritage preservation. Jenny, please go ahead. All right, thank you so much, Mike. Again, apologies for the delay in this webinar. But we're ready to get started now. So as you know, I'm Jenny Arena from Heritage Preservation. And we are so happy to have so many of you logged in, even though you had to wait. Let's see, we've got 131 participants logged in right now, which is great. I'm going to give just a quick introduction to the community and these webinars in case we have any new folks joining us. And then we will move on to our topic. So the Connecting to Collections online community was originally created in cooperation with the American Association for State and Local History and with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. It's moderated by Heritage Preservation and Learning Times produces both the website and webinars. The goal of the online community has always been to help smaller museums, libraries, archives, and historical societies quickly locate reliable preservation resources and network with their colleagues. To help you do that, we've compiled an extensive list of online resources that are broken up by my topic on the online community. You can see that under the menu topic of the page. We also host these drop-in webinars, like the one we're doing today. They don't drop the phone. Our members will find useful. A recording of all of our webinars can be found under the webinar archives on the top of the page as well. And a recording of this webinar will be added there soon. So today, I am so pleased to welcome our speaker, Amanda Shep. Earlier this year, Amanda gave a presentation at the Small Museum Association Conference focused on digitization. And I'm really pleased. She agreed to give it another go for us. So if you weren't able to make it out to Ocean City, Maryland, you now have a chance to take a look at this presentation, which is just fantastic. So without further delay, I'm going to move my slides off. And Amanda, I am going to hand things over to you. Excellent. Well, thank you. I am Amanda Shep. I am the digital director of the skepticism. It is a small, entirely digital museum. We have a physical repository of about 1,000 artifacts. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of storage space to display them or display space left. We have plenty of storage space. It is being maximized all the time. So today I'm going to talk about digital collections and projects and how they can be helpful for small museums and institutions because it's kind of the way of the future. It's the thing that really needs to be focused on more. And it's a really interesting thing. There is a poll over on the other side of the screen for anybody that has digitized. And if you are a staff member, and I would like to see results from those to see what I am dealing with. Oh, a lot of you have digitized before. Excellent. And primarily staff. Cool. All right, then. So the skepticism started as a passion project for our curator, essentially. He is really into a lot of the paranormal stuff he's been on. Is it real? The ancient aliens shows like that. He does the big talking head thing about debunking mysteries and things like that. So we essentially wanted to figure out how to digitize all of these artifacts that he's gained from all of his travels and missions that he's gone on, things like that. So he originally started a picture style gallery site, which is nice and tidy, but there's no search features. There's no real typification or classification of anything. So we wanted to reexamine this really interesting collection and modernize it. So digital collections can impact the smaller institutions through the institution, itself, the staff, and the audience. Digitizing this collection opens a lot of doors. It's possible to collaborate with larger entities and institutions. It's a way to modernize, and it's a way to get good publicity for yourself. The skepticism has been featured on the travel channel show Mysteries at the Museum twice. And it's been really interesting to that. Also, two of our collections are featured on New York Heritage's Foundation at the Digital Humanities repository or collections in New York State. You can digitize your collection. So this little cart that's featured in the picture here is one of my digitization loads for one day of work. That's basically the same as how it looks when you see it in the actual museum itself. It is a lot of very compacted stuff crammed into display cases. And it's a really lovely collection. It's a lot of really interesting stuff. But sadly, we don't have the space to access visitors. So we decided to go online and make ourselves a digital museum. And that increases our publicity and accessibility. It doesn't matter if people can't get to where we are. It gave us a chance to partner with larger institutions. And as far as staff and volunteers, we just got in some younger volunteers that are working on digitization projects and smaller things. They help me around the social media, like the Twitter stream, and update our Facebook. And it's not necessary to be an expert in these things. It's really nice. Social media is also really important and stuff like this, to keep people posted on what you're working on, to keep updates frequent, and keep interest at a constant role. Is your collection particularly interesting? You don't need to digitize anything and everything. Digital collections should be interesting. They should offer a point of local history or something about your institution. They should be unique. If you have at least one of these qualities, then that's great. If you have more, it's definitely better. So before you embark on a digital project, you should really think about your haves versus your needs. You should think about your staff, your equipment, how you want to display things, who your target audience is, and do you want to collaborate eventually? Do you want something simple? Do you want something that's made mostly for your local population? Or are you trying to get more scholarly patrons in your facilities? So let's talk about these in depth. As far as skills, how detailed do you want your digital collection to be? Is your main audience for in-house things, or are you just digitizing that for your own records? Do you just need your own spreadsheets and metadata on your own purposes? Or are you going to put this up on the internet? Do you want everyone to see it? Do you want to partner with a larger consortium so you know that everyone will see it and that it will be scholarly? How public and professional do you want this to look? Or how public or how professional? Do you want a flashy digital collection, or do you just want a simple page that you can make on Foursquare? These are definitely things to focus on. When you focus on these things, it helps shape the parameters and the size and scope of your digital collection, your budget, and your needs, and how long it'll take you to complete it. So these are all things that you need to really think about. As far as your metadata requirements go, how involved and intricate is your collection? Do you need a librarian or a digital collection professional to complete all of this metadata? Or do you have a volunteer on staff that's familiar enough with your collection in order to get things going on? Is it capable? Sorry. Is it possible for you to do everything you want with as simple a thing as possible? Oh, I'm sorry. Metadata, essentially to back up, is data about data? It's the say you have a thing, say you have a vase. It's not enough to say it's a vase and what's on it. You need to do things like where it came from, the provenance of it, the date of it, who created it, were there any contributors to it being a part of your collection. So there's a lot of things involved. This is also where you get in your copyright statement and your notes and restrictions for use of your images. There's a lot of information that's very critical that's tacked into your metadata. So it's important that you have it as complete as possible, especially if you're posting it live on the internet. You also need to know in your metadata what's complete versus what's incomplete. This is something we've run into a lot with the skepticism. We have a lot of really great artifacts, but as far as how old they are or a date on them, a lot of that has been gained through independent research. And then as far as your metadata itself, you want to know if you are going with a Dublin core or an RDA format. Sometimes, depending on who you're funded by, that sets up your parameters. When we worked with the 3R's New York Heritage Consortium, they had their own metadata template that was very detailed. And it made things really, really complete. And it brought a really good picture of what was in each collection. Is there any training or education that needs to be had to complete the digital collection? And how will your metadata be displayed? Do you just want it all out there in a spreadsheet? Or do you want little bits of it to be picked and chosen for highlights? As far as your copyright restrictions on your digital collections, this is another skill. Do you own these rights to these items? Are your digital collection items in public domain? Do you have the rights to them? Can you get permission for the rights to digitize them? Do you want to offer your images to the public? We do, because the skepticism tries to be a little more educational and things like that. We basically want people to use our images freely. We've had a lot of really interesting partnerships and people to do this stuff with. We've gotten, we have a collection of alternative medicine bottles, like old patent medicine bottles. And recently, there was a journalist from Germany that wanted to highlight some of our bottles in an article that was featured in a scholarly magazine. And that was really cool. And without us being able to do that, we wouldn't have had the opportunity to partner with something international like that. You never really know who will be interested in your presentation. How can you restrict use of your images? You can, there are options for a simple contact form or if someone contacts you for use of your permission, you can send them a file and have an agreement with them about what is going to happen. You can watermark it. We found in the past that watermarking it tends to be more restrictive than anything, because if people want to use your images, then you have to go and find the one that's not watermarked and then go through all of this thing again anyway. So it's an on the fence thing. It's good for some people, but it didn't really work out for us the way we wanted to, but it is a thing. Also, you need to know if you have staff that can write copyright statements. Do you have someone that is capable of declaring the restrictions for use of your images and what you want done with them and what your intentions are for putting these images in the public? Do you have someone that's capable of doing that? Do you have someone that understands copyright law enough to suggest what should be done? As far as the equipment goes, you want to think about the focus of your collection and the size of your collection. Do you have a lot of two-dimensional things? Do you have a lot of three-dimensional objects? The skepticism features a lot of paintings and etchings and works of art. There's also a lot of physical 3D items. Some are large, like three-foot-tall spirit trumpets and some are very tiny, like a two-inch ancient Egyptian Wastabi figure. So sometimes you need to have a broad access for things as far as capturing the digital image. As far if you're going to do photographs, do you have access to a photographer or someone that's decent enough with digital photography to take a high-quality master-tiff image? If you are looking for volunteers for this, a good place to start is, do you have an art school nearby or an arts program or a digital amateur photography class in a high school? Go talk to them. See if someone is interested in an internship. We'll get to cost in a minute, but thank you for that question. So that will be addressed momentarily. Also, as far as your equipment, you need to figure out, do you have a place to take these pictures? That was one of our problems originally, was we had nowhere to physically take these pictures where you had decent lighting and decent shadows and you weren't forced to be locked into a small office. But later on, we built a small archival photo booth in the basement. I will show you what we have in ours in a future slide, so thank Tide if you're interested on that. Do you have access to enough equipment? Do you have a decent scanner? Do you have a good enough camera? My first digital project that I did for school years ago, the girl that was to supply our camera, did not have a camera that would take tips. So we had to do some crafty work on that. And things ended up fine, but these are things that you need to definitely think of when you are undergoing this task in the first place, is do I have what I need? If not, how can I get it? You can get it through grants. If you have someone that's willing to work on it personally, that's pretty great. Do you have people that know how to do these things? It doesn't matter if you have the best and brightest camera, if no one on your staff knows how to operate it. So you have to really think about what you have in these aspects. Now, let's talk about software. Oh, as far as metadata is concerned. This is an example of a metadata sheet from Content DM Collection. It is very broad. As you can see, there are a lot of very small categories and facets that you need to know what is expected of you to describe this item. Let's talk about software and systems. Yeah. Now that you've figured out your level of audience and ownership of these items and necessary equipment and how much your staff can do with this, how are you going to display it? Do you want a webpage, a gallery-style thing? Do you want a rich exhibit? Again, the question of intranet versus internet, your audience kind of determines your display expectations. Why would you create this glorious multimedia-rich display for just your staff to check their funding or their inventory? But don't let this discourage you. There's a lot of free and very low-cost options as far as digitization software. As far as open-source software, which is sort of basic, generally free, some of its low cost, but for the most part, these are free programs. They're the best for small museum usage. They're very user-friendly. I haven't had an issue with any of these programs thus far, anything that I can tackle. You can modify them with plugins. They start out with a variety of templates, like if any of you have ever used Blogger or anything like that or built your own website on Squarespace. It's a lot like that for some of these. It's just a very basic template that you can just plug in your information and go from there. It's really nice and really easy. A lot of these are self-educational, like you learn how to use this yourself. It's not really a book or a manual that you can go to. However, there are a lot of help. There is a lot of help that is available in forums and tech support and developers. We used Omica for the skepticism, and they don't really have a very freely available startup manual for it, but their forums are very active with developers and other users of Omica, and generally you get your questions answered really quickly, and it's very nice. But with these sites, it's really easy to create and manage your content. You can have a lot of robust narratives and layouts. They're very good for beginners. You can make more complex sites with plugins and add-ons. Your expertise in this isn't really necessary. It's not something that you have to be a check person for in order to do these. But there are a lot of collaboration potential. If you have a lot of ideas and you have a person that's more tech savvy than you are, you can usually create something that's really special. So, back to Omica. Their focus is on websites and online exhibits. They are free and open source for starter packages. If you want to get more complex or have way more complicated stuff, there are tiers that you can pay on. They do have multiple plugins like Google Maps and Library of Congress subject cuttings. You can use this cool thing called MeetLine where you outline your exhibit digitally, and they kind of walk through your digital museum and check out your spaces as you've laid them out, which is really neat. They do rich exhibits with a lot of customizable plugins. They do optimized search engine support, which is really cool. As far as multiple cataloging possibilities, they do that. You can do double and core. You can customize it with your own metadata template. You can do Library of Congress classification. It's really, really up to you, which is very nice. Also, Collective Access is free and open source. Their focus is on cataloging and web apps and display. I have a friend that uses it, and it's really, really neat and tidy, very clean site. I really like the layout of it. I definitely recommend checking it out if it's something that you're interested in. Open Exhibits is another open source software. Their focus is on multi-touch interactive exhibits. You can use a smartphone or touchscreen style, like a tablet app with your exhibit. It's for use with existing digital objects. Essentially what it does is it renders it in a 3D format where you can in it and look at it from all sides virtually, which is a really nice resource if you have something that's particularly fragile or difficult to display. There's also AdLib Museum, which is free for the light version, which is less than 5,000 objects. Their focus is on data management. It looks like a graphic interface with module add-ons. They also do mobile collection management with apps for museum staff. You use RFID and barcodes to take a digital inventory, and then you can relate that to your staff so you guys have a more condensed and concise way to keep track of what you're doing with your collection. AdLib Museum is also used by over 1,600 museums in 25 countries. Their smallest client is a one-man operation, and their largest one is the National Museum of Ireland. Lastly, let's talk about Pachyderm from the New Media Consortium. It's focused on beginners and people with little tech expertise. It's also free and open-source. They use pre-designed templates in form, like a WordPress blogger type of thing. It's very flash-based, very interactive. You do multi-media exhibits. If your collections are heavy in images or audio or video, this is good for people that do oral history collections if you want to digitize them, things like that. As far as the question about the State Museum archives and the software and systems, it does vary for each one. It really varies quite a bit depending on what the collections are. The collection itself is mostly what you base your decision for software and systems off of. If you want to catalog more, then you might want to go with certain things. If you want to display more, you might want to go with something flashier like Omica. However, if you are a little more comfortable or experienced, there are more complicated systems, not necessarily in a bad way. These are more thorough for metadata and cataloging. It's suitable for a more complex collection or with larger audience needs, or if you're working with a larger consortium. This is usually something that they suggest. I'm talking about Content DM. Their focus is on cataloging and exhibits. There are proprietary applications run by OCLC. They are mostly focused around uploading, description, management, and access as far as your collection goes. It's not really about display. Their display is kind of basic, and it's not very customizable, but it's very, very, very information dense. If you have a lot to say about an object, I would definitely go with that because they're wonderful. I've worked with them before. It's really simple. You can change all kinds of fields at one time. They have a lot of very unique features as far as metadata control. It's really nice. Is there any reason that you can state you use this? Again, it's really up to your collection. If you're trying to work with a museum that's on a larger level and they use this and you want to show that you can also use that, I guess I would suggest doing that if you're trying to show that you're like-minded as far as your collections go. I think that might get a good idea, but it's not really my area to suggest. Anyway, with Content DM, the only problem with it is that for smaller museums and smaller institutions, it can be a little cost prohibitive if you're working on your own, which is why usually Content DM is found in partnerships or collaboration attempts. Also, there are services like Canto from Cumulus and Lyrisis. They do things like... Essentially, if you want to digitize a collection and you don't feel that you have the capacity to do it or there's just something that you can't do, you send your artifacts to them or they come in and assess your collection, and then they digitize it for you and send you all of the end product images and files, and you do what you will with them. I haven't really used a service, so I don't really have much of an opinion on them. That is an option. If that's something that makes you more comfortable. Ultimately, your software insistence is about what is going to display your collection best in the way that you want it to be displayed and what software suits your needs and your skill level, your collection's needs and your staff skill level and your equipment capacity. This is an example from Omica. This is what it looks like when you are adding a file. You can see the Dropbox files. This is the image you pair with it. Over here, there's the double and core and the item type metadata. These are all just plug-in fields. You can kind of see what it's like, but there's your nav bar on the side where you can get to your plug-ins, like simple pages and else you collect or else you suggest, and you can see all of your items and everything. It's a really distinct, very tidy system. I really like it. So, now that you have a better idea of what goes into a digital project, how do you figure out the balance of these elements? Essentially, in my experience, I have learned that it's the balance of equipment, staff, and budget leading to the size and scope of your digital project and what you are going to do in the end. As far as your equipment goes, it's pretty straightforward. You either have it or you don't. Availability to use it is a factor. The budget, if you need new or updated equipment, that's also a big factor. And who do you have that can use it? As far as staff goes, that depends on the needs of your digital project. Do you have, well, first of all, are staff available or volunteers? Are they knowledgeable in your collection or in the process of digitization? Or do you have volunteers that are interested in starting this as a resume option or a hobby or if that's something you're interested in going to school for? It's definitely something that can be done. So, the skill level kind of hinges on the intricacy of the digital project. It's your items and your description of your items. So, do you need a subject expert? Do you have someone that knows enough about your collection? Do you have someone that knows enough about your equipment and everything like that? So, basically, do you have someone that can do this for you and has the technological capacity as due to it for you? As far as your budget goes, that kind of depends on your staff and equipment and availability. What sort of funds are available for your digital project? How much of your collection are you going to digitize? If you have, like we did, over a thousand items, I would be here four or five years digitizing and finding all of them. So, you need to select your most prominent items or the things that most encapsulate your museum statements, your missions, things like that. How does this collection represent who you are as an institution? How much of this collection do you want to show? And how much, then, how do you want to display it? Do you want a simple website? Do you want an open source thing? Do you want an elaborate digital collection? So, this all leads to the size and scope of your digital project. So, your software, your time, your level of cataloging, and your funding. These are all very important things that you should keep that are before you throw together a proposal and rush down to your director's office. So, I have some tips for you. Don't get too overwhelmed. There's definitely things that you should keep in mind that could help you out when things are looking tough. So, tip one, think outside of the box. Our curator basically doesn't really embrace technology like some people do. So, when we were planning this out, we essentially had to take his old display website and print it out page by page in a three-ring binder to present to him what it would be like to plan it. From these, I had to physically show him layout models. This photo is one of those. Each of those little post-its is an item, and the larger things are categories. And making sure that branches and ideas are connected. Yeah, you get a little crazy when you're under the gun like that. But there is no wrong way to outline a digital collection. It's fine if you think outside the box on this stuff. Not everyone thinks the same. Do you want a narrative, or do you want a straight-up archive? Are you trying to tell a story with your collection? Is it a deeper meaning than just here are these things that represent the period in history? You need to think about the flow of your items and the message that they're telling your viewers and your audience. So, this is my photo boost that I mentioned earlier. It's not very fancy. It's not very spectacular. But it gets the job done. The photos that come out of it look great. As soon as you get the lighting under control, it's wonderful. It's in a very shut-off, dark, archived room where no one bothers me. It's lovely. So if you don't have a ton of space, you don't have a ton of professionals, you don't have a ton of available materials to make these things, it's not really a problem. Do-it-yourself solutions can sometimes help you out a lot more than you think. So if you know a photography student or an amateur photographer that wants to help or gains some opportunities in their portfolio, ask them if they want to help you digitize. Don't be afraid to ask. Don't be afraid to be creative. So, don't panic over obstacles. This is my cat. Behind my cat is my laptop full of work. This is my obstacle every day. It's easy to become overwhelmed with new projects and technologies, but take a step back and pick apart what exactly it is that you are having a problem with. And don't be afraid of a challenge. You can learn new software or programming language. Once you get into it, it's awesome. It's empowering. You have a new job skill. You have a new thing that you can brag about that you know how to do. It's good for your institution. It's good for you. It's helpful for everyone to develop and get new skills and work with new things. It's really lovely. So I have a question. This is run to the museum director. As far as that, we have only had a problem with visitors. Our skepticism is located inside of a not-for-profit center that is primarily a private facility. After our first episode that we were featured on Mysteries at the Museum, we got a ton of visitors the next day who had no idea that this museum was near them. Unfortunately, it was very difficult to explain that it's a museum that's not really open to the public. So it's easier to guide them and steer them toward your digital collection. And also, digital collections give people more opportunities to experience it. It'll give them, if it's something that they really are fascinated looking at and learning about online, chances are if they're a reasonable distance away from your museum, they will come in and visit your artifact and see it and learn more about your institution. It's possible that those people will bring their friends to see this or bring their children or their families. It's a new way to get exposure for this and for your collection. Say you're in a very rural area and you're not near a highway. How else are people going to know what you have unless you have some really great marketing or really great PR people? It's a matter of how much do you want to be seen and are you going to be upset if people are seeing you in person or on the Internet? Does it really matter? As long as you are reaching someone and educating them, isn't that the point of the museum? So that's in the condensed version. That's my answer to that before I get all crazy and philosophical. So if you're still interested and you're not scared yet, let's talk about funding. Once you've figured out the scale and size of your digital project and what your needs are to complete it, you may need to think about additional funding options, particularly if you want a fancier program to display it on or you need some nicer equipment. Many options for funding are available on small and large scales. Let's talk about federal funding. There are a lot of federal grants available, especially to smaller institutions. The Institute of Museum and Library Services has the IMLS Museums for America grants. This is a grant that has the goals of strengthening museums for lifelong learning and community importance. It covers things like conservation training, collection conservation preservation, increasing your public access, and technology. So if there are things that you want to do more with, it's a larger grant, but it's definitely worth applying for. Also, the National Announcement for the Humanities offers a NEH Conservation Assistance Grant for smaller institutions. These basically match... they offer an index to match the grant with the program. So if you know that you are a smaller institution and you want help with your digital humanities collection or digitizing something that's particularly interesting towards the smaller humanities, it would be good to apply to them. They do have a service on their website where, depending on your collection, your geographical location, they will match you for your ideal grant to apply for, so you weren't just flooding the market with grant applications. They also offer... Oh, also, the goal of the preservation assistance grant is preservation, planning, activities, and smaller institutions. It's not really for digitizing itself, like for the software and the end-user part of the project, but it will help training and digitization and preservation training. So... and those are due May 1st. That is correct. Thanks, Jenny. Also, digital humanities start up grants. The goal of these is to benefit digital humanities initiatives. They're meant for the initial and planning stages of your project, and they were focused on innovative technological uses and public programming education for your digital collection. Applications for these are due September 11. Also, the National Historic Public and Publications and Records Commission, their focus is on historical documents and records. They offer a couple really nice grants, digitizing historical records grants. The goal of this is to digitize and make online copies of important, significant historical records and collections. So if this is something that your institution hosts, you may want to consider it. Their deadline is in June, and also they offer a Decoding Democracy Access to Historical Records Project grant. The goal of this is to facilitate and enhance accessibility to primary source materials. So they want establishing archival programs, digitizing online placement of archival finding aids, processing archival collections. These are... it's a lot of... if you have a big, giant collection of historical documents, you should really, really, really apply to these people. Also, National Historic Preservation Offices are a good place to go for start-up funding or ideas for collaboration. They do have smaller grants. They do help you gain access to larger grants they can recommend you for things or point you in a better direction. But they also do possible collaboration and additional funding if it's something that's significant to one of their existing pieces. National and private funding. The Knight Foundation is a technologically-driven arts foundation. It focuses on technology and engagement with technology. Their focus is on bringing small communities together with open information. They do a lot of really interesting Web 2.0-type things. If you're interested in a last year or a more interesting display site and you have a very art-tight collection, I would really talk to them. As far as I know, they're not limited to the United States applicants. So the people that were asking about Canadian funding, I would definitely look into it. As far as the Sloan Foundation goes, they're focused on science and technology. They do grants for publications of science and technology to advance the understanding of that. They have a digital IT grant and they work with the Digital Public Libraries of America, the goal of which is for universal access and knowledge to digitized resources. So if you're interested in adding to that or contributing to the Digital Public Library of America, I would try it. They're really open and they're very, very communicative with their applicants and participants. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation focuses on scholarly communications and IT programs. They have grants that support preservation and access, increasing public access, and humanities information dissemination. So they're basically digital humanities, digital humanities all the way, go for it. Also, the American Alliance of Museums offers a variety of grants and programs for digital projects and emerging technology. So there is a lot to do with multiple levels of project planning and project foundation and project completion. There's a lot of places for you to go if you need additional funding or additional help with possible collaboration opportunities. There's a ton. Also, if you are a smaller institution, archives.com offers $1,000 grants for local history efforts. So if you have a particular, like, a family's collection or something like that, definitely go for them, because they are really, really nice and they publicize all your stuff on archives.com. And if you're feeling froggy, there is Kickstarter. Museum 2.0, which is a blog by Nina Simon, did a really excellent analysis of people that have used Kickstarter for museum projects versus small passion projects. There was a guy that made a board game with stocks versus a digitization Kickstarter where a small museum was trying to raise up enough money to digitize their whole collection. And so Kickstarter is very receptive. It talks about crowdsourcing 2.0, creative funding. You appeal to a wider audience with the... Because there's a change in donors now you have, like, a younger generation that doesn't have as much disposable income necessarily, but they're still interested in these endeavors. So this is how you appeal to those people. You might not be whining and dining people at a gala to get $1,000 donations, but if you get 200 people to give you $20, that's pretty nice. And you can give... You encourage your long-term relationships and foster new museum memberships with tiered rewards. You can gift memberships, like, you give us $15, and others will give you a membership, and that'll keep them coming back for all year. It'll get them to bring people. It'll engage them. So there's... Kickstarter is definitely worth looking into, especially if you have unique incentives and unique things that you can do. Nina Simon on her blog talked about one of the funding incentives for the museum project was to, if you gave a certain amount, there would be a traditional gala-style reception for you. And people really went for it. So it's definitely nothing to see that. So this has been a whole lot of information. However, don't fret, there is a checklist. So for your digital project, do you have significant material? Do they conform to the mission of your institution? Are these rare or valuable or fragile items? Does anybody possibly have a duplicate of one of these items? You want... If it's something that's difficult for you to display, you're going to want to digitize it because that will reduce wear and tear on that item. It'll reduce the damage that should be done to its firm displaying and UV, things like that. So if you have a lot of items that are fragile or not in the best condition, digitizing them is a really good option to make sure that those items in your collection still be viewed and appreciated by the public. Second thing, do you have permission? Again, I will drill this. Do you own these objects? Do you own their rights? Do you have copyright clearance or copyright ownership? Or are they in the public domain? You need to make sure that that is wear and tear before you ever start a digital project. As far as your metadata goes, are your items cataloged and described to your project needs? If not, how long will it take you to get them that way? Are they described for your end-user needs? Whoever is going to be looking at your digital collection, is all of your metadata going to make sense to them? I hope so. Essentially, your end-user wants the enhancement of their intellectual access and authenticity. You need to lay out your parameters for intellectual control, your terms of use, what you're going to do with your images, how you feel about someone downloading or altering one of your images for their purposes. Like if someone wants a picture to put in a term paper or their own project for school, that's fair. If someone wants one of your pictures to put on a t-shirt, you might want to think about that. But these are all things that should be laid out in your metadata. And if anyone has questions, they can contact you. There should be a contact in your metadata also. As far as research value of these items, is this digital object going to be frequently used? Is this something people want to look at? Will it increase the value of this object because it's been digitized? Is it going to be more in the thoughts of people and in the public because it's available for someone to see at any time that they want to see it? Does it have a collaborative value? Is it something that's interesting only to your museum or is this something that could provide historical value for your state's institution or for a national institution? These are things that you should definitely think about. The lifespan of your digital object, how are you going to keep it current? Are you going to update this often? Are you going to re-photograph it? Are you going to keep the metadata updated? Are you going to have your digital object accessible through multiple platforms and formats? Is it going to be interoperable? Can people access it from only Apple computers? Or can people access it from anywhere that they want to? You've got to think about things like this. Finally, your resources. Again, a question of have versus need, funding versus time. And you also need to have your estimated cost per image into your final list of things to consider before your digital project gets started. Generally, that's calculated by thinking about staff versus equipment versus time versus funding and kind of working out a rough digital cost per image estimate. It doesn't have to be hard to estimate. So digital projects can definitely offer a lot to your small museum. They can open the door to many new patrons, many new donors, many new collaboration opportunities. The metadata might change to answer that question really quick before I go on a diatribe. The metadata might change in case there is something that happened to your object, like if it broke or if it was damaged somehow. Does someone need to update it or did you replace it? Has someone done something to it? Has it been cleaned? Have you had restorative people come in and work on it to fix it? Things like that. Or if it's done, say you have a photo. You think you have the provenance for it. Someone comes in and says, wait, no, that's not your photo. That's my photo. Things like that. So in case there's new ownership or new information about it, you should reflect that in your metadata. It's not just a one and done thing. It's the constant evolving thing. So to conclude this, there are a lot of new possibilities. Mobile phone apps, augmented reality exhibits where you can handle digitized objects through a touchscreen app. Special exhibits that break down physical disability barriers. Digital collections are really great for small museums that don't have a lot of like handicap access. If someone can't physically get into your museum, how can they see your objects? So if you have it online for someone that they... or for their own purposes and they can see it in a format that they need, that's perfect. And you're still getting an audience and you're still reaching someone with your collection. So if you're interested in stuff like this, definitely check out Museum 2.0 from Nina Simon. She's wonderful. Check out the new media consortium. It's a community of universities and colleges and museums that keep stats and updates on digital collections. And they also have news and they offer seminars if you want to learn about it. Really great. The Center for the Future of Museums is run by the American Alliance of Museums. And they monitor museum trends and connect museums to prepare for coming changes and challenges in the future of museums and institutions. So definitely check those things out. They're really worth your while. And that's it. If there are any questions, I will happily take them. Oh, thank you so much, Amanda. We've got just a few more minutes left. I'm just going to point out really quickly. I think what would be fun for this webinar, as soon as the recording is available for this webinar, we'll go ahead and post the recording. It looks like some people added some fantastic resources. We'll get those up as well. We'll open the comments on this post. And I think the question that would be great for all of you to kind of chime in is, you know, making the case for digitization. It sounds like that's one of the harder things to do is convincing leadership that this is a worthy thing to take on. So I'm going to pose that question. And folks, if you're interested, can leave comments in that so that we'll kind of stay with this webinar. So we do have one question, Amanda, from Kathy Gao. She's curious, how about a few examples of online museums? As far as online museums, there are a lot of digital collections that are offered through colleges that are really spectacular. My museum, the Skeptisium, which is, again, only digital, if you want to check that out. As far as off the top of my head, there is a really wonderful digital museum of fortune-telling that's based out of Northern California, and they do a really good job at displaying their artifacts. Off the top of my head is kind of all I can show off with it. No worries. We also did a while back, you guys might remember, a webinar WebWise Reprise, and we went through using Omeka for that, so another great resource. But we can add some more to this post as well. Oh, yeah. If anybody has any interesting digital museums to pose, oh, yeah. Digital collections from a historical society museum. Check out the New York Heritage Collection. They do digital collections from historical societies, as well as libraries, museums, and other independent foundations. I would really recommend checking them out. It looks like, we'll see if a few people chime in and have questions, but if they don't, let me just quickly get through my closing spiel. So if everyone wouldn't mind clicking on this webinar evaluation link, your feedback is really helpful for us in planning for future webinars and figuring out what to do next. And I will say up next, our next hour-long drop-in webinar will be Thursday, April 17th, at 1 p.m. We'll be reviewing the Incident Command System for Cultural Institutions with David Carmichael just in time for Mayday. So we'll post that on the online community shortly. So it looks like we're good to go. Thank you all so much for joining us. Again, a recording will be available shortly at the link above, and we'll open up the comments on that so we can continue this conversation. If you have other questions, you're also welcome to go to the discussion board. Amanda, thank you so much for giving us a taste of the Small Museum Association. Well, thank you very much for inviting me. I had a great time, and I hope everybody learns things. Great. Let's see. Are you... Quickly, we can get to this question. Are you aware of any past-perfect issues? I don't have that much experience with past-perfects when I presented at the conference in February. There was a representative that attended my presentation, so he kind of fielded past-perfect questions. I've heard good things and bad things about them, so I'm not really certain. I don't have a very definitive standpoint, but... Sure. And I think one of our participants mentioned earlier that, you know, they've used past-perfects, the website add-on, but it doesn't allow you to zoom into photos as well as other software platforms. So there is one comment from our folks. And then let's see. One last question. I know I totally... You were off the hook, and now I have more questions for you. It's quite all right. I am fine with this. As far as cross-pollination with Pinterest, I have not really experienced any cross-pollinations with Pinterest. I think it could be interesting if you started a Pinterest for your museum or for your digital collection. That would be a really amazing way to use social media to get your items out there and get your message out there, and that would be really, really innovative, innovative actually. So thanks for bringing that up. And we can look for some as well and include on this webpage. Well, thank you all so much for joining us. Thank you, Amanda, and thank you Learning Times. We'll see you again in April. Have a great afternoon. Thank you, everyone.