‘Universal’ access in 3000 years? The Digital Collections of the State Hermitage Museum

Educating and engaging museum audiences in contemporary times is becoming even more important, considering the persistent information society, which has created the need for museums to utilise new methods of communication. Digitisation has therefore become the new instrument for access and preservation in museums. However, the process of digitisation has brought about many challenges for museums, one of the most problematic is deciding what to digitise in the first instance from the wide range of collections. This paper presents a case study of the Hermitage museum and its process of digitising a small part of its large collection, as well as the procedures and strategies regarding the main selection criteria for the objects to be digitised. This study is based on qualitative research using a case study of the Hermitage museum utilizing interviews with the museum's officials responsible for digital collections and projects managers of the International Business Machine (IBM) Corporation, who developed the digital library for the museum. The study employs the analysis of the empirical material and draws on the theoretical frameworks of Walter Benjamin, Fiona Cameron, and others. It reveals that the selection process of the objects being digitised is still crucial and relevant for the current agenda of digitisation in museums. The results of the analysis suggest that such a selection process should be more open and should rely on the opinion of interested communities and museum stakeholders.