Digitization in museums: Between a fashionable trend and market awareness

The purpose of this article is to verify how museums in Poland deal with the challenge of digital transformation. The proliferation of information and communications technology (ICT) enables the digitization of museum collections and increases their availability to the public. The preservation and popularization of cultural heritage, being an important part of the cultural policy, is a priority for the European Union, resulting in increased funding of digitization initiatives. The study presented in this article is based on a survey performed among a group of leading museums in Poland which are recorded in the State Register of Museums. The results show that museums accept digitization as a crucial element of their activity. 69% of the institutions present some part of their collections online and 94% intend to increase the scope of digitization. However, most institutions share less than 25% of their current collections online despite having a larger part digitized. 83% of museums share their collections exclusively on their own websites or dedicated platforms, and most institutions (62%) observe a positive connection between sharing collections online and the number of physical visits to the museum. The results also show that museums tend to prioritize heritage preservation over collection sharing.