ENUMERAT – Survey on Digital Heritage Practices

A European project that collected data on the digital activities of museums. EGMUS was an associated partner and uses ENUMERATE results to complement its own work on digitisation.

Reports

EGMUS was actively involved in the ENUMERATE Thematic Network, which provided annual stakeholder reports to document the activities and outcomes of the network. The full, anonymised dataset from Core Survey I is publicly accessible via the ENUMERATE Data Platform.

Two stakeholder reports were published during the project’s duration:

ENUMERATE Stakeholder Report 1

ENUMERATE Stakeholder Report 2

Survey Report on Digitisation in European Cultural Heritage Institutions 2012

In early 2012, ENUMERATE carried out a short but wide-reaching Core Survey among European cultural heritage institutions. The online survey ran from February 1st to March 31st 2012. Over 2,500 institutions from 29 countries participated, and nearly 2,000 valid responses were collected. The survey focused on key areas such as:

The digitisation of collections
The cost of digitisation efforts
Access to digitised heritage collections
The preservation of digital heritage materials

The findings, statistically analysed, were summarised in the first ENUMERATE report on the state of digitisation in Europe’s cultural heritage sector. Among the most significant results:

Approximately 83% of institutions reported having a digital collection
About 20% of all collections had already been digitised; 57% were still awaiting digitisation
Over 50% of institutions collect born-digital materials
34% of institutions had a digitisation strategy
Around 85% used web statistics to measure the usage of their digital collections
Institutions estimated that in two years they would have doubled the amount of material available through Europeana
On average, 3.3% of paid staff were working full-time on digitisation-related activities

The full report, Survey Report on Digitisation in European Cultural Heritage Institutions 2012, as well as the translated questionnaires, are available for download.

ENUMERATE Newsletters

In early 2013, the ENUMERATE network conducted a more focused Thematic Survey, addressing four main areas:

The costs of digitising cultural heritage
The access to and use of digital heritage
The size and growth of digital collections
The preservation of digital content

More detailed information on these areas can be found in ENUMERATE Newsletter 4.

To support the development of this survey, several expert meetings were organised in 2012 and early 2013. These included:

27 January 2012, The Hague – Size and Growth of Digital Collections
30 March 2012, London – Costs of Digital Collections
6 June 2012, Madrid – Access and Use of Digital Collections
17 January 2013, The Hague – Focus Group on Digital Preservation

A summary of the results and discussions from these meetings is available in ENUMERATE Newsletter 3.

For each theme and sub-study, specific heritage institutions were invited to collaborate with the ENUMERATE team and national coordinators in various EU member states. The thematic surveys were implemented between February and April 2013. Data analysis followed in April, with results published in summer 2013.