In March 27, 2001 by order of the Minister of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania there was set up a working party to prepare the conception and model for computerising the collections that Lithuanian museums possess; therefore, it may be considered as a beginning of digitisation of Lithuanian cultural heritage. The group consisted of highly experienced museum specialists, who working together developed a digitisation conception.

In 2002, Lithuanian Art Museum (hereafter LAM) joined the EUREKA project MUSEUM ONLINE CATALOGUE (MOC) initiated by National Museum Board of Latvia for the Baltic States. Apart from mentioned institutions we have partners from Estonian Ministry of Culture together with IT companies from three Baltic States: joint-stock company “ALNA” (Lithuania), GenNet Laboratories Ltd. (Estonia), and IT Consulting Ltd. (Latvia).

Somewhat financially supported by Lithuanian Ministry of Culture, in 2004-2008 LAM together with JSC “ALNA” set up and introduced the Collection Information System (RIS) and the Integral Collection Information System (IRIS). Both RIS and IRIS made it possible to computerise the stocktaking of collections, along with storing, managing and control of data about museum collections. In addition to that, it enabled LAM to provide data for museum specialists and internet users as well as to ingest content to the national portal of Lithuanian cultural heritage ePaveldas www.epaveldas.lt (initiated in 2005). The public access to LAM's electronic catalogue http://www.rinkinys.ldm.lt/iris was provided and functions till now.

There is already some basic data on more than 156 thousands of exhibits in LAM RIS database. In 2008, RIS was installed and adapted in Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, along with M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum. Several other Lithuanian museums have their own collection information systems but these are not suitable for digitisation of exhibits.

Another important aspect that motivated to further develop the digitisation processes in Lithuanian museums were the resolutions “On the Affirmation of Strategy Concerning the Development of Information Society” and “On the Affirmation of Conception Concerning the Digitisation of Lithuanian National Heritage” that the Government of the Republic of Lithuania passed respectively on June 8 and August 25 of 2005. This underlying conception proposes the following guidelines: there should be introduced favourable circumstances to initiate and develop the strategy along with the programs and projects of cultural heritage digitisation, and to also coordinate and monitor their implementation securing continuous digitisation progress in libraries, museums, archives and other institutions directly involved in the preservation of cultural valuables.

Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania together with Information Society Development Committee and Lithuanian Archives Department (both under the Government of Republic of Lithuania) were entrusted to coordinate and to constantly monitor the digitisation of cultural heritage.

The aim of cultural heritage digitisation is to digitise unique and valuable cultural heritage objects along with information about them; the main objectives being to, first, “create an integrated information system of Lithuanian cultural heritage based on homogeneous standards and information usage agreements, that would ensure a long-term preservation of and access to digitised information"; second, "to enable the long-term preservation and usage of cultural heritage by providing its digital copy and information about it"; and third, to promote and disseminate Lithuanian cultural heritage among diverse world cultures, and to contribute to the development of integral information field of European cultural heritage.”

The conception indicates that upon deciding which objects are to be digitised the following criteria should be applied: uniqueness, content and value, physical condition and age.The urgency to further develop the digitisation process in Lithuanian museums is clearly stated in the resolution “On the Confirmation of Museum Modernization Program in 2007-2015” passed on March 14, 2007 by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania. In this document it is emphasised that there is still no integrated museum information system which is why sharing information, searching collections and exchanging them is virtually impossible. As fundamental to the strategy, the resolution designates its crucial objective, namely “with the help of modern means and technologies, to bring museums’ collections up-to-date and to familiarize society with the digitised cultural heritage and information about it.”

Another impulse that prompted museums to join the process of digitisation of cultural heritage was the resolution “On the Confirmation of the Strategy Concerning the Digitisation of Lithuanian National Heritage, the Preservation of Digital Content and Access to It” which was passed on May 20, 2009 by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, and which ratified the strategic plan for 2009-2013. The document claims that one of the strategic aims of the Government is “to promote the digitisation of cultural objects preserved in various memory institutions, to ensure that Lithuanian cultural heritage would be preserved, integrated into a virtual space of cultural heritage and broadcast into the world.” Furthermore, there is a need to develop an integral information system for digitisation of cultural heritage, that would warrant the preservation of cultural objects, allow to access them as well as integrate them into the common digital space of European cultural heritage. The aim, therefore, is to capacitate a right set of legal, organizational and otherwise important circumstances in order to develop the integrated infrastructure of Lithuanian cultural heritage digitisation. An integrated system for searching, preserving and accessing digitised cultural heritage is to be created as well as efforts put to improve the competence of the specialists working with digitisation in various memory institutions. Along with that, it is important to standardise the processes of cultural heritage digitisation, preservation and access, to create and spread the digitised content of Lithuanian cultural heritage worldwide and last but not least, to encourage the initiatives that promote digitised cultural heritage.

Together with the resolution there was ratified a plan for 2009-2013; it is pointed out there that LAM together with Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania and Lithuanian Archives Department under the Government of the Republic of Lithuania are to carry out the functions of digitisation centres in memory institutions, to coordinate the digitisation of Lithuanian cultural heritage, to encourage communication between various memory institutions and also to be responsible for spreading news and information on this subject locally and internationally. The funding for implementation of this project will be obtained from the Republic of Lithuania and EU Structural funds.

The plan indicates that developing the integrated system for searching, preserving and accessing the digitised cultural heritage in 2009-2011, the Lithuanian Integral Museum Information System (hereafter LIMIS) 2009-2011 should be established and installed in Lithuanian museums.

Following the resolution, on June 30, 2009 Lithuanian Art Museum founded a new department - Lithuanian Museums' Centre for Information, Digitisation and LIMIS (hereafter LM IDC LIMIS) the mission of which is to not only organise and coordinate the digitisation of museums' valuables and to present cultural heritage on the international portals but also to develop the Lithuanian Integral Museum Information System administered according to homogeneous standards and encompassing a number of collection databases of Lithuanian museums.

In 2009, executing the order “On the Assignation to Pursue the Project ‘Implementation of Lithuanian Integral Museum Information System LIMIS in Lithuanian Museums’ Given to Lithuanian Art Museum” issued by the Minister of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, LM IDC LIMIS conceived a project on the installation of LIMIS in country's museums and proposed it to the Central Project Management Agency. The preliminary dates for the project were March 2010 – August 2012. During this period, LIMIS should be developed and installed in 19 Lithuanian museums (4 national and 15 state museums). For the second stage of the project, LIMIS will be introduced in other Lithuanian museums (regional, departmental, etc.).

The project was agreed upon and launched in March 18, 2010, after the contract between LAM, the Information Society Development Committee and the Central Project Management Agency concerning project funding and administration had been signed. For now, LIMIS regulations based on valid laws of the Republic of Lithuania are already issued, LIMIS specification confirmed. Public buyings are still being administered; classifiers, thesauruses, keyword dictionary and the dictionary of persons are being compiled.

In February 2010, LAM together with M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum (Kaunas), Lithuanian Sea Museum (Klaipėda) and Šiauliai Aušros Museum (Šiauliai) signed an agreement according to which regional digitisation centres will be founded in those three museums. In March 2010, the centres were established; their function is defined in the set of regulations issued by LAM and the above mentioned museums. Each centre has one employee from LM IDC LIMIS.

LIMIS is being created not only for computer-assisted stocktaking of museum collections and exhibits, their storage, management and control, which follows unanimous standards in accordance with the list of standards recommended by the Minister of Culture as well as the well-established order of the preservation and stocktaking of museum collections. It is as well as its underlying objective to integrate the databases of Lithuanian museums into a joint information system and to ensure the development and maintenance of LIMIS electronic catalogue. It will also provide means for digitising museums' exhibits and developing full-text databases, along with a search tool as well as information on exhibits. The system will enable museums to not only send data about their exhibits to the integral museum information system but also to make their own electronic catalogues, provide free access via internet and to do virtual exhibitions from the data that is aggregated in museums' electronic catalogues. In addition, they will also be able to take part in other digitisation projects and to independently provide their project partners with data on their digitised exhibits.

All the necessary classifiers, thesauruses, keyword dictionary and the dictionary of persons have already been started to compile. The work is done by five specialists from the Methodical department of LM IDC LIMIS who work under the project “The installation of the Lithuanian Integral Museum Information System (LIMIS) in Lithuanian museums”. They cooperate with various Lithuanian museums and working parties. Evaluating a wealth of experience that memory institutions from Lithuania and other countries have lists of classifiers and thesauruses are made considering the particularity of the types of cultural objects that are accumulated in country's museums. The already compiled classifiers and thesauruses are then sent to the museums for the special working groups comprising of the specialists of art, culture history, natural and technical sciences, and restoration. They analyze the data and make suggestions to complement or correct it. After the analysis of comments and suggestions, LM IDC LIMIS specialists make adjustments and then send it once again for museums' specialists to review. Only after the final check they are presented to experts and scientists to evaluate. The classifiers and thesauruses will be both in Lithuanian and English, except for particular cases concerning specific collections where additional terms in Latin and Russian will be included.

At the present moment there is no such system that would integrate all country's museums and would enable to automatically stock take and digitise museums' exhibits whereas the need for that exists. Regarding that, in 2010 LM IDC LIMIS presented the virtual exhibition information system http://www.muziejai.lt/emuziejai that offers every museum a possibility to already start learning how to digitise exhibits, and to supply internet users with information about them. As a result of collaboration with ATHENA, the system is designed so as to make it possible to harvest information on museums valuables into EUROPEANA through ATHENA mechanism. In the beginning of 2010 more than 500 exhibits have already been digitised and the data provided to the administrators of ATHENA project.

In the coming years it will be possible to harvest data on museum valuables directly into EUROPEANA through ePaveldas www.epaveldas.lt. From 2010 onwards Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania is running a project “Creation of Virtual Electronic System of Cultural Heritage” that is sponsored from EU Structural funds. The project has several partners among the most important memory institutions in Lithuania, including three museums: LAM, Lithuanian Theatre, Music and Cinema Museum, and Šiauliai Aušros Museum. Participating in the project opens up a possibility to contribute to the creation and development of the integral system that will provide tool for search, preservation and access of cultural heritage.

Danutė Mukienė
Head of LM IDC LIMIS

0