The 24/7 Museum

The expansion of museums onto the Internet is one of the most fundamental changes currently taking place within the institution. The key concept of going digital is audience orientation – on the one hand, to motivate new groups to visit the museum, and on the other, to interest people online and invite them to explore the contents of the museum while underway or at home. The latter with increasing tendency: the 24/7 museum has long since begun collecting statistics on clicks per month. But what strategies and resources on the part of institutions do projects require that go beyond the traditional displays of collections and are seeking new ways of appealing to audiences? What approaches are there currently for attracting visitors, and have they proved effective? How can such projects be prepared, funded, and supported? And what is needed when museums increasingly refer to themselves online as “open museums,” where not only interaction, but participation is supposed to be possible? How much moderation and support are necessary for this? And how does one deal with the loss of interpretive authority? In the workshop, we shall discuss the challenges to be overcome in such processes, as well as the social benefits – in terms of involvement, personalisation, knowledge distribution, and community building – that can be generated.