Summary of project results
"Digitalisation facilitates higher accessibility of cultural heritage. Digitalisation projects financed since 2011 by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage are supervised by 6 institutions. Such fragmentation means that no consistent database of cultural assets has been created. An analysis of asset availability indicated that many digitalisation projects have been conducted without regard for the needs of people with disabilities; a lot of institutions do not publish their collections online, or limit access to a single use. The objective of the project was to control the correctness and effectiveness of digitalisation of cultural assets, financed by the Ministry. The results of the project tested the knowledge about digitalisation, as far as qualitative and quantitative progress was concerned, and improved advocacy for improving and proliferating digital cultural assets. The actions included monitoring of grant applications for digitalisation projects and websites presenting the digital assets. The collected data was presented in the reports: “Heritage digitalisation - scale, type, philosophy"", “Publishing digitised cultural assets online. Utility - accessibility - practices"", which contain recommendations concerning publication of digitalised assets. A database of all digitalisation projects was prepared and published on the website
www.ekultura.org. As a part of the promotional and advocacy actions, 4 reports were prepared, as well as 5 expert evaluations. 83 articles were published on ekultura.org. Several meetings were organised: 3 on good practices of heritage use, 2 conferences spreading the knowledge about the results of digitalisation in Poland, a conference and a workshop on the copyright law, a culture jam-type workshop (creative utilisation of heritage), and a hackathon. The beneficiaries of the project were the employees of the institutions digitalising the heritage. Other beneficiaries included a broad group of internet users and residents of Kraków, who, by participating in meetings and visiting the ekultura.org website learned how and where to gain access to digitised heritage, and how to use it."