How museums will preserve the digital heritage sustainably?
It was the year 2008, and I was a teenager sitting in front of my computer, trying to make the most of my one-hour screen time. I spent all my time on Livejournal, a social blogging site, designing my diary and selecting images and fonts with great detail. Little did I know that this hobby would shape my professional path and lead me to become a graphic designer later in life. As I grew up, I stopped using Livejournal, but chose not to delete my blog and leave it as a virtual collection of memories. Unfortunately, it didn’t serve that purpose for long, as all the images disappeared, leaving only text without any visual context. My teenage years on the internet were destroyed, and I experienced a personal digital dark age.
My personal story holds a deeper meaning as it relates to the broader cultural impact of digital loss. The digital dark age has been defined as a lack of historical information, that can happen when digital files get corrupted, technology evolves, or the data becomes inaccessible (Young, 2017). In our modern world, digitality has become an integral part of our lives. From cherished memories to treasured photos, from meaningful conversations to thrilling gaming experiences, preserving the digital aspects of our lives is of utmost importance. UNESCO (2023) refines digital heritage as “a digital legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations”. The Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland is working on developing methods to preserve digital heritage. To achieve this goal, libraries, archives, and museums are collaborating and taking on the responsibility of safeguarding our digital heritage for both current and future generations (Sainio, 2023). This work is crucial for preserving our societal and cultural history.
MuseumX is a joint initiative between the Finnish Museum of Games, Rupriikki Media Museum, and the Finnish Postal Museum, with the goal of preserving our digital legacy. The project strives to build a unique new museum, that will find solutions for preserving the mediatized world, interaction, and the transformation of media. The museum will open in 2024 both physically in Vapriikki museum center and as a digital museum that can be accessed anywhere. The new museum aims to create conversations and provoke thoughts about how communication affects our lives, both individually and on a societal level (MuseumX, 2023).
I am excited to work with the MuseumX project for several reasons. As a frequent museum visitor, I am intrigued to see how museum development works from the inside. Digital museums are a fairly new concept to me, so this is a great opportunity to learn more about them. I believe that my background as a graphic designer, as well as work experience in media, advertising, and communication fields, will be beneficial to this project. This project represents a new and innovative way of seeing digital culture and has a deeper societal importance by creating new ways to preserve digital culture and discuss these topics. I am interested in sustainable design as a way to create societal change, which is also an essential part of this project. Moreover, working with a cultural project allows a more creative approach, which is a natural way of working for me.
There were lots of interesting topic suggestions by MuseumX, and it wasn’t easy to choose the most interesting. However, there was one topic that particularly caught my attention: “building sustainable digital museum collections, on what kind of platform, can existing database systems be used”, which I’d like to develop to fit into my interests. Traditional digital collection work has meant both collecting digital artwork and digitizing physical objects, but when the museum is operating digitally, the same tools and ways are not working. However, even though digital museum collections differ from physical ones, they hold the same questions of preservation, having a safe place for collecting and showcasing the work properly. In addition, collection work will eventually have an impact on the museum experience.
From my own perspective, I’d like to gain academic knowledge that will be turned into a practical solution. My preliminary interest is to understand how digital museum collections can be built sustainably, considering different aspects. According to Pop & Borza (2016), the four pillars of museum sustainability are economic, social, natural, and cultural environments. These would serve as the basis of the project, from the perspective of digital. The goal of the project is to create a compact sustainability strategy or a guidebook for creating digital museum collections. Considering the use of different digital platforms would also be a part of the strategy, as pieces of a bigger picture. Some areas to consider in the project include for example curating, cultural and societal impact, and digital sustainability.
For this project, my objective is to gain a better understanding of museum sustainability, improve my strategic thinking skills, and become familiar with design thinking methodologies. Design thinking involves a mindset and approach to work that enables the creation of innovative solutions while also prioritizing a human-centered approach (Dekker, 2020). To broaden my knowledge as a designer, I believe it would be advantageous for me to develop my strategic skills for sustainability and learn about design thinking.
Additionally, when this project is transformed into a thesis, it will contribute significantly to the relatively new field of digital sustainability knowledge in museums.
The next steps in this project involve discussing ideas with my project group and learning more about their ideas, which may help shape my own. I also plan to dive deeper into the theoretical background to gain a better understanding of the topic and create a detailed plan. It’s important to listen to my project partner’s thoughts and consider any special needs they may have because the project should provide real beneficial value to the museum.
References:
Dekker, T. (2020). Design thinking (International edition.). Utrecht, Netherlands: Noordhoff. MuseumX. (2023). MuseumX website. Retrieved 22 October 2023, from https://museox.fi/
Young, L. (2017). Data Reawakening. Science Friday. Retrieved 22 October 2023, from https://apps.sciencefriday.com/data/reawakening.html
Pop, I., & Borza, A. (2016). Factors Influencing Museum Sustainability and Indicators for Museum Sustainability Measurement. Sustainability (Basel, Switzerland), 8(1), 101–. https://doi.org/10.3390/su8010101
Sainio, T. (2023). Digital heritage. Ministry of Culture and Education (Finland). Retrieved 23 October 2023, from https://okm.fi/en/digital-cultural-heritage
Unesco. (2023). Concept of Digital Heritage. Retrieved 22 October 2023, from https://en.unesco.org/themes/information-preservation/digital-heritage/concept-digital- heritage