Museums yet to embrace the digital age: the presence of Catalan museums on the internet

Authors

Abstract

Catalonia has a network of over 500 museums and collections open to the public. During 2013 they welcomed over 20 million people through their doors. However, this wide network is not always visible on the internet, where Catalan museums show significant variations in their levels of online presence. The article analyses how various public museums and collections in Catalonia made use of the internet as a way of interacting with the public. Our study analyses email, webpages and social networks, and includes all the Catalan centres, with special attention given to those of most relevance. The results show how there are still great variations in the online presences of Catalan museums and collections. There is a significant number of institutions without a direct presence on the internet, while others are very active. Email is the most common tool, despite not being used to interact with the public. Use of webpages is relatively widespread, while the presence on social networks is still very limited, as regards both the number of institutions present and the amount of content published. This is an element that influences the number of followers each centre has and the impact they can generate by this means.


Keywords

social networks, museums, collections, internet

References

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Author Biography

Daniel Paül i Agustí, Lleida University

Daniel Paul Agustí is PhD in Geography degree and teaches at the Tourism University of Lleida. Participates in various competitive research projects such as Research Group "Territory and Society" of the Government of Catalonia (2014 SGR 973) or project funded by the National Plan for R & D "Competitiveness and innovation in territorial development: definiendo the basis of a new socio-economic model for a post-crisis España "(CSO2012-39373-C04-02). He has published several articles on the role of museums in promoting the city, among them Paul i Agustí, Daniel. (2014) "Differences in the location of urban museums and their impact on urban areas," International Journal of Cultural Policy, 20 (4), p. 471-495 and Paul and Augustine, Daniel. (2013) “Las políticas culturales y sus repercusiones en la imagen de la ciudad”. Scripta Nova. Revista Electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales. vol. XVII, nº 432. At 2014 he  has participated in a research funded by the Fundación Banco Santander at the Universidad de Chile to analyze the impact of cultural innovation policy strategy of positioning of the various common the metropolitan area of Santiago.

Published

15-06-2015

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