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Peale Museum Collections Management Digital Strategy
Link
Link
Location
Pratt Institute School of Information, New York City
Date
Spring 2022
Class
INFO - 683 Museum Digital Strategy
Project Description
How can The Peale become more digitally relevant as an institution, and how it better serves digital society’s ever-changing needs? Currently, there are two ways of interacting with oral histories on The Peale website, through the Be Here Stories map or via curated playlists hosted by Soundcloud. By creating a searchable database of keywords you would increase user access to these oral histories which allows the institute to remain relevant in discussions on cultural heritage and identity. Using the textualized narratives to support the creation of a search tool to access the stories is also benefiting the hearing impaired. In further context, with The Peale building under renovation and the continued effects of covid restrictions, audiences are unable to gather physically and heavily rely on digital realms to interact with The Peale institution. As other institutions develop their online offerings, digital audiences will come to expect similar experiences. Expanding the collection access provides a way for the community to engage with content beyond geolocation.
To truly harness the power of digital, we must strategize from The Peale Museum’s current working groups on the topics of education and outreach, to meet a seamless need for audience access to collections. Through the following suggestions, we can look to transform how The Peale can use media to grow cultural capital by connecting past and current lives to the modern and growing societies, which in turn promotes cultural sustainability. In promoting the extension of audience reach, we can outline ambitions for increasing income, human resources, and accessibility all to cater to digital collections management. These abilities will shine through the outlined objectives below in promoting accessibility and preservation of collections, broadening discoverability and enhancing the museum’s profile, and resourcing revenue and funding.
Methods
The project discusses analysis and recommendations for digital strategy at the Peale. This includes SWOT Analysis, digital analytics on the website and social media, business model canvas, the digital strategy vision, and target audience analysis. As for the key objectives, we outline Internal Systems for the Collection
Upgrading The DAM Hosting Searchable Collections and Accessing and Engaging with the Collection's Social Presence and Relevance Website Function. In the action plan to meet these objectives, we detail goals such as Social Media Promotion, Website Redesign, Revenue and Funding, Fellowships, Stakeholders and Partners, Grants, DAM Upgrade and Implementation, Creating Visuals, and the project Timeline with institutional Professional Capacity. Finally, we discuss the evaluation with Key Performance Indicators as well as an exit strategy.
My Role
This project was completed by three people including myself. I took on a leadership role and came up with most of the objectives and action plans for digital collection management and access at the Peale, working side by side with the client. The presentation was completed almost entirely by myself.
Learning Outcome Achieved
Research
Rationale
My work in creating this digital strategy for The Peale in Baltimore demonstrates the ability to identify target audiences, user needs, and current lacking deliverables and resources. These resources are necessary to identify and implement for updating the access and design of digital collections, in order to meet the user demand for workable, ever-changing new technologies. Our goal-oriented research questions allowed us to find the appropriate research methods for building the best strategy in updating The Peale's collections management system. Particularly, the research behind DAMs and resources for non-profits became a highlight in this project. Some of our suggested recommendations have been successfully adopted and applied since our presentation to the client.
