GLAM/Newsletter/July 2016/Contents/Brazil report
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Cultural Mapping: knowing better the Brazilian museums scenario
July was an important month for development projects. Some important bids were open to receiving new proposals and, among them, it is worth noting the bids of Sao Paulo State Program for Promotion of Culture. The program was with two specific bids to museums since mid-June 2016, one of which was directed to the publication of museum collections.
Considering this opportunity, a group of volunteer members of the Wikimedia Brazilian Group of Education and Research, the International Committee for Collection / International Council of Museums (COMCOL/ICOM) and Tomara!, a consultancy company in cultural projects, came to discuss and develop a cultural mapping project about the museums performance profile with regard to sharing practices and use of collections on the Internet.
This idea came particularly from discussions held by COMCOL/ICOM, as a point of research on collaborative initiatives of reinterpretation and creation of knowledge about the museums collections. In Brazil, this research is really necessary, considering that there is still little information about how the museums (and its employees) work on the Internet and provide (or not) their collections on digital platforms and social networks. There is a consensus that there is an operational difficulty for the institutions, which have few people to accomplish digitalization. Besides, there is a lot of misinformation about the local copyright law and issues like Creative Commons licenses. But how deep is this misinformation problem? If we want to solve them, what are the main critical points to advance the release of collections? And above all, what do the professionals think about it? They would view the digitalization and publication of materials about collections on the Internet as a priority or not?
These and other questions are design bases sent to the bid of the Sao Paulo State Program for Promotion of Culture already mentioned above. If the project is approved, it will receive funds to develop a pilot survey for 6 months focused on the universe of São Paulo State, whose results can serve as a kickoff for something that can be done on a national scale.
