Analysis of a small university collection with thousands of views

Abstract

This article analyzes the process of recording and digitizing the collections of the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy at FMVZ USP, their availability for consultation and use by the Wikipedia platform, among the ten most accessed in the world, and their influence on the planning of communication actions at the Museum and in redefining its audience, now in an expanded virtual environment. With the objective of studying some impacts of the insertion of this Museum in the digital universe, this article also presents and discusses the MAV's participation in the constitution of the Brazilian Network of University Collections and Museums, as an articulator of the digital platform and its databases. In the search for influential marks of these two processes in the planning and management of the Museum's scientific communication and dissemination actions, it was possible to detail and analyze specific and similar aspects of planning a digital collections policy for a cultural institution and, at the same time, identify some gaps in the analyzed processes, as well as some steps that were outstandingly important for the realization of the two projects. In its final considerations, by analyzing the two cases with a view to implementing an institutional policy for digital collections that will last, possibly in the form of a program with continuity, the article seeks to problematize the process, highlighting its relevant and challenging aspects based on the experiences described. However, it reaffirms the need for museums to adopt as soon as possible a strategy of insertion in the digital universe, especially in the university environment and in the context of the pandemic, in order to remain close and in constant dialogue with its wide community of visitors, whether face-to-face or virtual, given their heterogeneity.