How can the catalogues be marketed more effectively?
A general concern among study participants was that digital catalogues are not easy to find using their typical research habits:
I find that these catalogues often don’t come up in Google searches. And so if you don’t know it exists, you’re not going to find it and you’re not going to know it’s there as a resource.
I think if it’s not something you can get to through a library database or another… journal database or something like that, it’s probably not going to enter my regular scholarly resources.
When asked how they typically conduct their research, focus group participants frequently mentioned Google Scholar and the library databases of their home institutions. One focus group participant who is a librarian for an art institution said that from her perspective, these digital catalogues were easier to locate than their print equivalents:
I see the digital content and the format scheme very promising for discovery… We have a Primo discovery layer that can find these kinds of publications and with more granularity than it would be with any sort of printed catalogue. And I think also just for reference in general and provenance research and so on, this material is just from my point of view, much more easy to discover and use.
If users discover the catalogues via links from academic search engines or library databases, we would expect these to show up as referral traffic in Google Analytics. At the moment, however, the catalogues are not widely listed and show little traffic from sites such as Google Scholar and JSTOR. These sites provide guidance to publishers who would like their articles indexed, and adhering to their guidelines is one way museums could increase the visibility of their digital publications.1,2
| Catalogue | Listing status — # of referred sessions | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Scholar | WorldCat | CrossRef | JSTOR | ||
| Monet (AIC) | ✓ — 5 referred | ✓ — 0 referred sessions | X | ✓ — 0 referred sessions | |
| Roman Mosaics (Getty) | X | ✓ — 0 referred sessions | X | X | |
| Dutch Paintings (NGA) | X | ✓ — 0 referred sessions | X | X | |
| Johnson Collection (PMA) | X | ✓ — 13 referred sessions | ✓ — 0 referred sessions | X | |
- X
- no listing, but catalogue may be referenced tangentially (e.g., via a specific artwork or citation by another source)
- ✓
- listed with link to catalogue
| Catalogue | Listing status — # of referred sessions | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Scholar | WorldCat | CrossRef | JSTOR | ||
| Monet (AIC) | ✓ — 5 referred | ✓ — 0 referred sessions | X | ✓ — 0 referred sessions | |
| Roman Mosaics (Getty) | X | ✓ — 0 referred sessions | X | X | |
| Dutch Paintings (NGA) | X | ✓ — 0 referred sessions | X | X | |
| Johnson Collection (PMA) | X | ✓ — 13 referred sessions | ✓ — 0 referred sessions | X | |
- X
- no listing, but catalogue may be referenced tangentially (e.g., via a specific artwork or citation by another source)
- ✓
- listed with link to catalogue
One librarian focus group participant mentioned Primo as a tool that might give her patrons access to the catalogues. Primo is a discovery service for libraries that provides patrons access to a wide range of resources. It is particularly suited to discovering digital content and allowing users to drill down to specific information of interest. In order to meet their target audiences where they are conducting research, museums producing digital catalogues should look into academic search engine optimization (ASEO) to increase the findability of their online publications in these databases.
Another focus group participant expressed a wish for a “central clearinghouse” specifically focused on online catalogues and other digital humanities projects. Other participants echoed this sentiment. One noted that he was unlikely to search through a museum website to find this kind of publication, so having it listed in a clearinghouse was preferable. Another participant agreed:
I will say even when I specifically know that there is a catalogue I am looking for, it usually takes me about 15–30 minutes to get through the museum’s website to even find something that I know exists somewhere.
Marketing through organizations that serve the catalogues’ target audience is another option for promoting the catalogues. A conservator who participated in the study listed the Bibliographic Database of the Conservation Information Network (BCIN) and the library of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) as two key sites for locating relevant publications.
Self-promotion is another important tactic. One individual who works in digital content for a major art museum said one of their tactics is to constantly share snippets of their catalogues via social media. Doing so can prevent catalogues from being forgotten after the initial marketing buzz has died down:
At [our museum] we have some online digital publications as well. And one of the things we do is constantly share that content. Like we dig up deep stuff from within it and share it on social media because we know that there was an initial push when we launched, and we sent out a press release and there were articles. But then people forget about it and you have to continually remind people.
Museums might even consider generating their own lists or repositories to help cross-promote their digital publications. The Getty’s own Abstracts of International Conservation Literature (AATA) was listed by one focus group participant as a go-to location for conducting his conservation research.
Another possibility for reaching wider audiences is promoting the catalogues through sites that reach beyond academics and researchers. One focus group participant with an eye on digital humanities commented:
I personally only ever find these catalogues when they get listed on sites like Colossal or Hyperallergic or some of the others like Open Culture—websites that do a really good job of letting the general public know that these digitized collections have suddenly been released.
Colossal and Hyperallergic are online arts and culture magazines. Open Culture is a repository for free educational media, including ebooks. Each of these could be a place to promote the digital catalogues, placing them in front of the eyes of those who are closely following digital humanities but also those with a general interest in what’s new in arts and culture.
Notes
- “Publisher Support.” Google Scholar Support for Publishers. Google. Accessed October 3, 2019. https://scholar.google.com/intl/en-US/scholar/publishers.html. ↩
- JSTOR for Publishers. JSTOR. Accessed October 3, 2019. https://about.jstor.org/publishers/. ↩