Creating Value for Museums, Academia and Communities: Overview from Sri Lanka

Abstract

Digitized museums have overcome the physical barriers and provided a golden opportunity for everyone who wants to access formation about the past. New technologies have changed the traditional concept of museums by placing the virtual interaction beyond the physical walls. People could share information and learn more about the past due to this digital revolution. Digitization has facilitated online access of museum objects, images and records. It attracts more audience by reaching out for millions who cannot visit a museum physically. People can access museum collections via social media tools and at the same time they are provided the space to share their narratives, which helps to bridge the gap between information rich and information poor. This dynamic change in culture of museums has supported museums not only to preserve the accessed data but for re-use and re-create data in order to boost economies. Sri Lanka is a country which as a rich history. It has many museums in her soil and thousands of valuable artifacts in other countries as a result of colonization. The local researchers always had difficulties to physically visit the world famous museums at least to study artifacts belong to their own past. A significant change has ccurredresearch culture in terms of virtual accessibility to museums due to the digital transformation in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan research community in Archaeology Anthropology and History in particular have benefitted immensely by this new change. This value addition will add more dynamism into the research culture in future.