A quick visit to the Museum of Fine Arts at mfa.org and I'm a convert! After all this talk of the pros and cons of digitization I thought I'd check out how museums are using their digitized collections. I came across the Virtual Tours and clicked on Art of the Japanese 
Postcard: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection at the MFA which was on view from March 10 - June 6, 2004. Lauder donated his collection of 20,000 Japanese postcards to the MFA and I just looked at over 200 of them with complete labels on-line. This is a great example of the benefits of digitization. I did not see this exhibit in person but was able to see a majority of the postcards featured in the exhibit three years later. There are other virtual tours available too at: www.mfa.org/tours/package.asp?key=59.
Postcard: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection at the MFA which was on view from March 10 - June 6, 2004. Lauder donated his collection of 20,000 Japanese postcards to the MFA and I just looked at over 200 of them with complete labels on-line. This is a great example of the benefits of digitization. I did not see this exhibit in person but was able to see a majority of the postcards featured in the exhibit three years later. There are other virtual tours available too at: www.mfa.org/tours/package.asp?key=59.This postcard, To Tomita Beach, dates from 1936.
3 comments:
I was thinking about your survey question - about being disappointed if something is only virtually available. Museums may need to make that distinction more visible to potential visitors - it could certainly be done easily as part of the digitized meta-data for a digitized collection (with the usual caveats about keeping the info current!)
However, if the object is a major or signature piece for an institution, how could you *not* be disappointed if you found it to be only virtually available? The more pervasive digitization becomes, the more this issue of one/the-other/both -- and how to let visitors know (if they do care) in advance -- will heat up. I think there's a strong case for both physical and virtual - in some instances one over the other (if a choice is necessary), in other instances both simultaneously.
For instance, I believe that some collections, like these Japanese postcards, perhaps lend themselves to virtual exhibition: they can be viewed front/back, in actual size, and zoomed-in with high resolution images
I was thinking about your survey question - about being disappointed if something is only virtually available. Museums may need to make that distinction more visible to potential visitors - it could certainly be done easily as part of the digitized meta-data for a digitized collection (with the usual caveats about keeping the info current!)
However, if the object is a major or signature piece for an institution, how could you not be disappointed if you found it to be only virtually available? The more pervasive digitization becomes, the more this issue of one/the-other/both -- and how to let visitors know (if they do care) in advance -- will heat up. I think there's a strong case for both physical and virtual - in some instances one over the other (if a choice is necessary), in other instances both simultaneously.
For instance, I believe that some collections, like these Japanese postcards, perhaps lend themselves to virtual exhibition: they can be viewed front/back, in actual size, and zoomed-in with high resolution images.
Yes, I agree with the MFA's digitized collections! Some are definitely better than others, but it's important to get a feel for it, especially if you're a researcher. I worked in special collections last year at a university and I digitized many photographs for the photography curator. It was great for the patrons to get online, find the exact photo they needed so that we could eliminate spending countless hours sifting through boxes with them.
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