The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced all museum institutions to reconsider their cultural outreach work, experimenting with new ways of virtual museum access to compensate for the physical absence of the public.
Digitisation of the collection, services and visitor experience is a constant leitmotif for new European museums that aim to use virtualisation as a new tool to enhance their mission and, at the same time, offer a more engaging experience to their audiences.
Previously, on the occasion of the ALDATalk: Digitisation of Services Webinar, we commented on SAMA's great steps forward in the digitisation of its services: the use of VR technology for virtual visits, the implementation of AR and QR codes, as well as the virtualisation of the collection through the creation of a complete catalogue by using the Axiell platform.
In this sense, on 18th of May SAMA participated as a viewer in the webinar 'Museums Go Digital', organised within the SMART project - Small Museums Representing Territories and which brought together a series of experts in the field of museums directly from the University of Salzburg and La Piccionaia Centro di Produzione Teatrale.
The interventions of the invited speakers Lukas Grundner and Stefanie Wallinger (University of Salzburg) and Gloria Marini (La Piccionaia Centro di Produzione Teatrale) provided a dialogue based on the need for digitisation in the context of the management and organisation of museum institutions.
Many topics were touched on including the need for in-depth digital studies of different audiences and the effort of museums to offer as diverse and personalised an experience as possible on the basis of digitisation. Of particular interest was the round table moderated by Markus Müllegger (Salzburg University of Applied Sciences), in which the next steps to be achieved in the museum sector were discussed, as well as a possible projection for 2026 on the theme of digitisation in museums.
SAMA expresses its sincere thanks for the invitation to this interesting webinar and treasures the experiences shared by its colleagues from Salzburg and Vicenza, convinced of the need to implement - especially in the case of small museums devoted to an eco-museum approach - an immersive digital approach that allows all types of audience to be brought closer to the museum's daily mission.
