Whitepaper
The Museum’s Handbook for Digital Stewardship: Governance, Metadata, and Preservation Strategies
Learn how to build a more connected approach to digital stewardship, bringing together governance, metadata, preservation, and access to keep your collections information trustworthy, meaningful, and usable for the future.
Build a Stronger Foundation for Digital Stewardship
Inside this comprehensive guide, you’ll discover:
How to put data governance before technology
Establish clear responsibilities, standards, permissions, and workflows so the stewardship of collections information does not depend on individual knowledge.
How to treat metadata as part of the collection
Create structured, meaningful metadata that preserves context and relationships, supports discovery, and helps collections information remain understandable over time.
How to preserve meaning, not just files
Look beyond storage and backups to protect the provenance, rights, relationships, and contextual information that give digital assets their long-term value.
How to build a connected digital ecosystem
Reduce information silos by defining systems and strengthening the connections between collections data, digital assets, conservation records, and online access.
How to make informed preservation decisions
Assess storage, integrity, formats, security, recovery, and sustainability to identify risks and develop proportionate preservation priorities.
How to prepare collections information for the future
Use structured data, established standards, controlled vocabularies, and documented workflows to keep information adaptable as tech, priorities, and expectations evolve.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Museum’s Handbook for Digital Stewardship about?
This guide explores how museums and cultural institutions can take a more connected approach to managing digital collections information. It brings together governance, metadata, preservation, systems, and access to help institutions keep digital information trustworthy, understandable, connected, and usable over time.
Who is this digital stewardship guide for?
The guide is designed for museum and cultural heritage professionals responsible for collections information and its long-term care, including collections managers, registrars, curators, conservators, digital asset managers, and others involved in collections strategy and digital workflows.
What will I learn from the guide?
You’ll learn how to establish stronger digital governance, improve metadata practices, preserve context alongside digital files, reduce information silos, assess preservation risks, and prepare collections information for future technologies and uses. The guide also introduces a practical maturity framework to help institutions identify where they are today and where to focus next.
How can this guide help my institution improve its digital stewardship?
The guide provides a practical starting point for reviewing your current approach. Five key questions help you assess what digital information you hold, what it means, who is responsible for it, how it is protected, and how it will remain useful. These questions can help reveal gaps in governance, metadata, preservation, and information management and identify priorities for improvement.
Do we need an advanced digital preservation programme to use this guide?
No. The guide emphasizes that digital stewardship does not need to begin with a major transformation programme. Its maturity framework moves from establishing visibility and consistency through to stronger connections and resilience, helping institutions identify practical next steps based on their current capabilities and priorities.
Does the guide cover digital preservation as well as collections management?
Yes. The guide explains why digital preservation, collections documentation, digital asset management, and online access should not be treated as entirely separate activities. It looks at issues including storage, integrity, file formats, security, recovery, metadata, governance, and access as interconnected parts of responsible collections stewardship.
Build Collections Knowledge That Lasts
Digital stewardship is about more than ensuring files survive. It means preserving the context, relationships, and knowledge that make collections information valuable.
TMS Suite helps institutions connect collections management, digital asset management, conservation workflows, and online access, supporting a more integrated approach to managing and sharing collections information for the future.