Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative

Helping museums unlock the potential of digital publishing with online collection catalogues

Project Details

A hand pulling an iPad out of a bookshelf with a Monet painting on the screen

Art Institute of Chicago's OSCI publication displayed on a iPad. Artwork pictured: Cliff Walk at Pourville, 1882. Oil on canvas; 66.5 x 82.3 cm (26 1/8 x 32 7/16 in.) Signed and dated: Claude Monet 82 (lower right corner, in red paint). The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.443

Photo: J. Paul Getty Trust

About

Goal

The goal of this initiative was to rethink the museum scholarly collection catalogue for the digital age by helping museums work together to transition to online publishing.

Outcomes

• Eight participating museums produced the first generation of digital museum collection catalogues, many of which received awards and favorable reviews from professional journals, including the CAA Art Bulletin

• These catalogues provided a replicable methodology for online scholarly volumes that other institutions can follow

• The catalogues have been used for research and teaching, helping revive close study of the object in the digital era, and have reached audiences that were larger and more diverse than for comparable print catalogues

• An OSCI Final Report published online through Quire, Getty’s open-source publishing platform, features “Nine Lessons Learned” and “Three Approaches to Online Catalogues” to help guide museums through the online publishing process

Project Details

Resources