Taking Advantage Of Emerging Technologies To Reap The Economic Benefits Of Digitisation And Gain Real-Time Insight Into Museum Audiences

据估计，英国的文化和遗产每年吸引了价值45亿英镑的游客消费，在英国各地提供了超过10万个就业岗位。然而，近年来，由于预算削减，英国的博物馆和文化遗产机构面临着越来越多的财政挑战。该项目研究了新兴技术如何利用，使英国博物馆和画廊能够从他们的数字化藏品中获得收入，同时更好地了解他们的实时观众。迄今为止，从数字化馆藏中获得收入的努力仅限于图像许可业务，这种方法的有效性和盈利能力正日益受到挑战。此外，尽管一个多世纪以来，研究博物馆游客行为的研究人员和博物馆专业人员认为了解博物馆游客行为的重要性是无可争议的，但很少有人利用最近的技术进步为博物馆提供对观众游客行为的实时洞察。基于我们之前的研究和工作(即：在这个项目中，我们与一家主要的大英博物馆，即剑桥的菲茨威廉博物馆合作，在三个对照实验中开发和评估了两个软件应用程序：IMS 2.0和博物馆仪表板。第一个应用程序使博物馆游客能够设计和购买高度可定制的商品与他们最喜欢的艺术品。后一种应用程序利用IMS 2.0收集的数据，使博物馆工作人员和展览设计师能够实时生成有关博物馆内游客行为的定制报告。该项目旨在为博物馆和画廊提供数字化收藏品。它将吸引数字人文和英国文化领域的关键人物，以及来自各种规模的博物馆和画廊的专业人士。它强调可持续性（技术解决方案的成本意识和低维护成本），旨在最大限度地发挥项目的影响，支持和帮助规模较小的博物馆从数字化中获益。为了传播该项目的研究和工作，将制作一系列期刊文章和会议论文，并将在伦敦大学学院组织一整天的活动，向博物馆代表分享主要发现并展示开发的应用程序。英国是全球三大文化强国之一，这个项目有可能为面临类似挑战的国际社会提供重要而及时的干预。该项目不仅有助于博物馆和画廊的数字化收藏的财务独立，也有助于更好地了解博物馆的观众，更重要的是，它将促进关于数字时代博物馆未来的国际辩论。

It is estimated that Britain's culture and heritage attracts £4.5 billion worth of spending by visitors every year, supporting more than 100,000 jobs across Britain. However, in recent years museums and cultural heritage institutions in the UK have been facing increasing financial challenges due to budget cuts. This project investigates ways emerging technologies can be utilised to enable British museums and galleries generate revenue from their digitised collections, whilst gaining a better understanding of their audiences in real-time. Efforts to generate revenue from digitised collections has so far been limited to image licensing operations, an approach that is increasingly being challenged for its effectiveness and profitability. Additionally, although the importance of understanding museum visitor behaviour is undisputable with researchers and museum professionals studying museum visitor behaviour for more than a century, little has been done to take advantage of recent technological advancements to provide museums with a real-time insight into the visitor behaviour of their audiences.Building upon our previous research and work (i.e. "Reaping the Benefits of Digitisation: Exploring Revenue Generation from Digitised Collections through Technological Innovation" by Valeonti et al. 2018) in this project we collaborate with a major British museum, i.e. the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, to develop and evaluate in a three controlled experiments two software applications: IMS 2.0 and the Museum Dashboard. The first application enables museum visitors to design and purchase highly customisable merchandise with their favourite artworks. The latter application utilises the data gathered by IMS 2.0 to enable museum staff and exhibition designers to produce custom reports on visitor behaviour in their museum in real-time. The project is aimed at serving museums and galleries with digitised collections. It will engage key figures in digital humanities and Britain's cultural sector, as well as professionals from museums and galleries of all sizes. Its emphasis on sustainability (cost-consciousness of technological solutions and low maintenance costs) aims at maximising the project's impact, supporting and helping museums of smaller sizes to reap the benefits of digitisation. To disseminate the project's research and work, a series of journal articles and conference papers will be produced, and a full-day event will be organised at UCL in London to share key findings and demonstrate the applications developed to museum delegates. Britain is one of the three leading countries in culture globally and this project has the potential to provide a vital and timely intervention for the international community as they face similar challenges. The project will contribute not only towards the financial independence of museums and galleries with digitised collections and towards a better understanding of museum audiences, but more importantly to international debates on the future of museums in the digital age.