These slides are from a DigitalGov University event on January 27, 2015 Join Courtney OCallaghan as she talks about: *The “democratization of art” Learn how museums, including the Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art, are expanding public access to their collections and focusing on the desires of global visitors, both in-gallery and online. *Digital zero to sixty With a foundation of open access to collections, the Freer and Sackler now has the freedom to begin the rapid prototyping of digital resources. Learn what’s next. *Digitizing the Smithsonian Learn about the process, pitfalls and payoffs of the first entirely digital Asian art collection in the world.

1. DIGITAL DEMOCRATIZATION OF
ART
Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries

2. Freer|Sackler
The Smithsonian Institution has two museums of Asian art: the
Freer Gallery of Art, which opened to the public in 1923, and the
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, which welcomed its first visitors in
1987. Both are physically connected by an underground
passageway and ideologically linked through the study, exhibition,
and sheer love of Asian art.
Image: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of Art

3. DEMOCRATIZATION OF ART?
Public Access + Digital Collections
Image: Group of five miniature bronze objects found together in Timna' Cemetery, Tomb 10: ladle, pan, bucket, funnel, bowl on tripod stand

4. Democratization of Art
“To be public these days is to be on the Internet. Therefore to be a public
museum your digital data should be free.”
Walters Art Museum curator William Noel
• Viewable anywhere a digital visitor has internet
– Available 24/7
– Minimize physical and financial contstraints
• Objects on a level playing field
– Photograph everything, from Whistler’s Peacock Room to the
tiniest unnamed ceramic sherd
• Quality Representation
– Images at high resolutions
– Ability to zoom and download
– More metadata

5. What does it mean to Democratize Art?
40.4% of the World’s Population has Internet
25.6% - 5 years ago
14.1% - 10 years ago
5% of the World’s Population has flown on a plane
*Internet Includes Internet at home, via computer or mobile device. http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/
*Statistics on the number of people worldwide who have flown on a plane vary from 2%-5%

6. Digital = Democratization?
Image: Group of five miniature bronze objects found together in Timna' Cemetery, Tomb 10: ladle, pan, bucket, funnel, bowl on tripod stand

7. Digital Collections Connoisseurs
Questions Freer and Sackler Galleries are striving to
answer:
• Who is the digital visitor?
• Are we open to visitors who are
different from those we expect in our
physical museum?
• How do you cater to this new digital,
global visitor?
Image: Group of five miniature bronze objects found together in Timna' Cemetery, Tomb 10: ladle, pan, bucket, funnel, bowl on tripod stand

8. Museums going Digital
Rijksmuseum, Netherlands
British Museum, Britain
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Victoria and Albert Museum, Britain
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven
Freer and Sackler Galleries, Washington, DC…

9. Digital Collection Policies
More large museums have digital policies in place than
small and medium museums. Less than 34% have policies
related to specific topic areas:
access (23.4)
digital format (21.5%)
materials not digitized (21.4%)
preservation (19.4%)
security (19.3%).
metadata (7.3% of museums)
conversion of digital files to
next-generation formats (7.6%)
evaluation (8.6%)
Status of Technology and Digitization in the Nation’s Museums and Libraries -
January 2006

10. Digital Fears & Concerns
“If they want to have a Vermeer on their toilet
paper, I’d rather have a very high-quality image of
Vermeer on toilet paper than a very bad
reproduction.”
Taco Dibbits, director of collections, Rijksmuseum
Looking at 22 arts and cultural organizations,
experts from across the field noted that institutions
are struggling to embrace the new realities of
audience behavior via the web, mobile devices,
social media, etc.
Let’s Get Real 2 report by Culture24 Action Research Project
Image: Milk with Van Gogh Painting – from the Rijksmuseum online collection

11. Your open digital
Virtual Collections
Bring visitors to your
Real Museum
Image: Group of five miniature bronze objects found together in Timna' Cemetery, Tomb 10: ladle, pan, bucket, funnel, bowl on tripod stand

12. DIGITIZING THE FREER|SACKLER
Process, Pitfalls and Payoffs of being the First SI Museum
Image: Russo-Japanese War by Toyohara Chikanobu, 1838-1912

13. Staffing Open F|S
2 Studios
5 Cameras
3 Photographers
2 Digital Imaging & Asset Specialists
1 Rights and Reproduction Specialist
3 Art Handlers
3 Archivists
3 Registrants
11 Interns
29 Curators
2 Web Developers
1 Videographer
1 Designer
1 Digital Editor
1 Dedicated PR Rep
1 Project Manager
1 F|S Chief Digital Officer
1 Smithsonian Institution
Image: F|S Digital Media and Technology Department

14. Equipment + Software
Digital Assets Management System (DAMS)
The Museum System (TMS)
Collections DAMS Interface System (CDIS)
High resolution 80mp digital camera backs
Phase One cameras
Capture One software
Image: Dr. Julian Raby, director of the Freer and Sackler Galleries, reviewing last object photographed.

15. Capture Process
Phase 1
• Survey ENTIRE collection
• Divide collection into like objects (size, weight, material)
• Create shoot lists
• Plan object handling with art handlers
• Photograph ALL THE THINGS!
• Tag, ingest, repeat.
Phase 2
• Survey ENTIRE collection (again!)
• Create MORE lists
• Find ALL THE THINGS
• More object handling with art handlers
• If in doubt, Photograph Again!
• Tag, ingest, repeat.
Image: Photographer Neil Greentree by Hutomo Wicaksono, Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian

16. Photographing “Problem Children”
Shooting long scrolls, one of our photographers worked with an
art handler to unroll and shoot the object one piece at a time.
These images were then stitched together to create a high-
resolution image of the entire scroll.
Large objects like
sculptures were shot in
situ and then the
background was
dropped out to a neutral
white.

17. Smithsonian + Freer|Sackler
Unit Websites
(Open F|S)
Collections
Search
Mobile Apps
TranscriptionCenter
Digitized Information Enabling Access Public Access
Enterprise Digital
Asset Network
(EDAN)
Search
Metadata
Images
Web
ServicesDigital Asset
Management
System
(DAMS)
Collections
Systems
CDIS

18. Functionality – Phase 1
• Every object has a record, every record has an image
• TMS linked to DAMS via CDIS
• Expanded EDAN services
– More metadata
– Object specific image delivery (thumbnail and hi-res)
– Full text search (from title to notes)
• Faceted search using TMS taxonomies
• Zoom + Scroll capabilities
• Download button
• Full size images

19. Rapid Capture Pilot Project
In May 2014, F|S hosted the 4th RCPP led by the Smithsonian’s
Digitization Program Office. This effort, designed to digitize vast
numbers of collection items quickly and efficiently, focused on
the Freer Study Collection (created in 1923). This was the first
time digital images of this collection were made available of this
collection.
Image: RCPP by Hutomo Wicaksono

20. RCPP Lessons Learned
• Stress testing everything from naming
conventions to DAMS integration
• Identified better ways of moving metadata from
TMS to DAMS
• Rapid, LIVE prototyping process

21. OPEN F|S
Branding the Online Collections
Image: Various Digital Wallpapers created for OpenFS Launch

22. What is Open F|S?
search + download + create
We’ve digitized our entire collection and we’re making it
available to the public. That’s thousands of works now
ready for you to download, modify, and share.

23. Launch Package Overview
• Media preview (SI + FS Public Affairs)
• Infographic
• Real Stickers + Digital Wallpaper!
• Branded headers for all social media
• Weekly object highlight in blog (Friday Fave)
• Detailed press plan
– TV, Social Media, Print

25. Image Stickers created for OpenFS launch
OpenFS Stickers

26. US Press
Forbes Life
Education Week
Popular Archeology
Washington Post
Home Accents Today
ArtInfo
AP
New York Times
The Art Newspaper
WAMU ArtBeat
GW Hatchet
Washingtonian
FedScoop
Fed News Radio
Voice of America
Kojo Nnamdi Show
Washington City Paper

28. 4.8 Tweets Per Day
Tweets Sent by
@freersackler
96
Tweets Sent by
@freersackler
96
1,482
Unique People
2,279
Total Engagement
15,372,215
Potential Reach
28,647,569
Potential Impressions
1,482
Unique People
People that engaged with you
on Twitter
2,279
Total Engagement
Organic mentions, @Replies,
Retweets, and Favorites
15,372,215
Potential Reach
Combined followers of
people tweeting about your
brand (1/1/15 to 1/20/15)
28,647,569
Potential Impressions
Potential times served in all
followers' feeds +380
Change in Followers
1,128
Bitly Clicks
+380
Change in Followers
1,128
Bitly Clicks
What happened?
How many unique
people engaged with
your account?
How many times did
these people engage?
How many people
could have seen these
Tweets?
How many impressions could
have been generated?
What started it?
Avg. Followers Per Person
Engaging Impressions Per Person
Reached
Engagements Per Person
1.5
10,373
1.9
Megaphone: Twitter engagement for the first 20 days of OpenFS campaign, analyzed by Simply Measured
Twitter Engagement

29. Site Engagement
First Week
1,222% Visitor Increase overall
Monday 12/29 (17,500 views) vs Monday 1/5 (231,400 views)
January Open F|S
590,000 views of open.asia.si.edu
19,300 views of wallpaper
10,996 views of Nude with Black Cat
January Requests for FS images
~8.5 million requests
~1.5 million requests for full size images.
~17,000 unique ip addresses
Image: Nude with Black Cat by Takahashi Shotei, 1870 - 1945, Fusui-gabo

30. DIGITAL ZERO
The Future of Open F|S
Image: Maitreya, the Future Buddha, Qing dynasty (1644 - 1911), Mongolia, Alice S. Kandell Collection,

31. New Audiences

32. New Collections

33. New Exhibitions

34. What is Digital Zero?
Digital Zero means reaching the zero-line of our online
collections - where we are at the lowest no- negative point in our
digital history.
We are no longer frantically digitizing disparate collections,
creating silos of content. We have created a foundation where
every object in our collection is represented digitally.
Digital Zero gives us the freedom to begin the rapid prototyping
of digital offerings and focus on how our visitors want to interact
with our collection.
We have removed the backlog, created a plan for the future, and
can focus on the now.

35. Digital Zero to Sixty
• Future of Open F|S
– Online Catalogs
– API
– Image annotations
– User created tags
– Visitor comments
• Crowdsourcing
– Hackathons
– Creative uses of Open F|S
– Github sharing
• App Integration
• Full site integration
Image: Cat with lantern; by Kobayashi Kiyochika, 1847-1915, Matsuki Heikichi

36. Beta Users
“Can I download the entire collection?”
“Do you have an API or JSON file I can use?”
We want your feedback on Open F|S! We are looking for
your observations and suggestions as we continue to
define Open F|S. We will send you exclusive hackathon
invitations, closed test versions of future iterations, and
other forms of gratitude. Help shape Open F|S!
asia.si.edu/collections/beta
Image: Group of five miniature bronze objects found together in Timna' Cemetery, Tomb 10: ladle, pan, bucket, funnel, bowl on tripod stand

37. DIGITAL DEMOCRATIZATION OF
ART
Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries
Courtney OCallaghan
Chief Digital Officer
ocallaghanc@si.edu
Image: Folio from a Divan (collected poems) by Hafiz (d. 1390); recto: text, Poem of wisdom of love, beauty, and celebration of time; verso: illustration and text, Feast of 'id
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