Konstmuseers arbete med digitalisering av sina samlingar : En semiotisk analys

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this thesis is to examine how six different art museums are working on digitizing their collections, and how they are made available to the public. To answer the purpose, three research questions were formulated; how the museums work with digitization, what is digitized and which programs and guidelines are used, and how the digitized material is made available to the public on the websites. The museums examined in this thesis are Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the National Palace Museum Taiwan in Taipei and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Prior to the study, previous research on digital humanities, digitization in museums, and the role of museums and their approach to digital collections, were studied. The theoretical framework used in the analysis consists of theories regarding “New media” and digital humanities, theories about “The museum process” and Actor-network theory, ANT. The method used is qualitative content analysis and semiotic image analysis of the museum websites. The results and analysis show that the museum websites differ in terms of design, functions, user-friendliness and collection content. In addition, the museums use different guidelines and software programs in the digitization process of their collections, although there is some overlap. The analysis shows that the Rijksmuseum, the Smithsonian and the National Palace Museum Taiwan are the museums in the study that have made the most progress with digitizing their collections and using interactive elements on their websites. The museum with the least developed digitization work is Moderna Museet, whose search page is the simplest and most standardized in comparison with the other museum websites.