Digital Sharing of Resources of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź - press conference

From August 2020, thanks to the support of European Funds under the Digital Poland program, a project called "Digital Sharing of Resources of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź" will be implemented. Therefore, over the next 3 years, it is planned to digitally develop many more works from the museum collection and make them available to the public on the website zasoby.msl.org.pl, with particular emphasis on the needs of people with disabilities. The implementation of the project will also allow for the partial reconstruction of the museum's IT infrastructure. Needless to say, in times of pandemic threats, this type of support for the museum's digitization activities is difficult to overestimate.

For the institution, this project is a continuation of digitization and dissemination activities carried out in previous years, primarily as part of the 5th edition of the CULTURE+ program, implemented from 2011 to 2015, as well as the project entitled "Modern access to the resources of the Muzeum Sztuki" carried out in 2017, which resulted in, among others, creation of the website zasoby.msl.org.pl, where further digital studies of works from the collection are published, as well as other museum materials accompanying exhibitions, scientific, educational and promotional activities.

Internal analyzes conducted in the museum show that both the collection of old art and, above all, the collection of 20th and 21st century art - which is the oldest and at the same time one of the richest and most important collections of modern and contemporary art in this part of Europe - still require many activities to develop and disseminating them digitally. In order to meet this challenge, the Museum must constantly invest not only in substantive activities, but also in the latest technical and organizational solutions in the field of digitization. The human, server and IT resources available before the project implementation did not allow for the creation of an appropriately advanced system for disseminating this content and increasing the efficiency of digitization work.

As part of the project, within 3 years, it is planned to digitize 1,228 works, of which 1,150 will be made available online. These will include works of old art (60 objects) and modern art (990 objects), films from the collection (78 objects), as well as library materials (100 objects). 5,000 documents containing metadata about works will also be made available. In addition, a total of 300 films will be created in Polish Sign Language describing digitized museum objects in terms of their readability for deaf people, as well as the same number of descriptions in simplified Polish and pictograms describing digitized museum objects in a way that facilitates their perception for people with cognitive disorders. To meet the needs of visually impaired and blind people, the museum will create 300 audio descriptions of works. Moreover, in each year of the project implementation, an educational and consultation meeting will be organized for all people interested in using this content.

Completion time: August 2020 – July 2023

Total value of the project: PLN 4,994,130.11 (gross) PLN 4,432,737.49 (net)

Contribution of European Funds: PLN 3,751,425.54 (net)

Co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. Amount of funding: PLN 679,359.96