A question posted on a museum listserv asked what to do when a museum board feared digitizing the collection because it imagined this was primarily a beacon for ebay thieves.

My response:

I have worked at Point Elliceand the Canadian government, in an effort to preserve what is there, digitized the entire collection. It is a mode of _preservation_. The reality is that all information that is not digitized in 2008 and onwards has a diminishing value in the Western world. This is especially true of museums and history where interpretation into online forms and networks is really the question. So it is not if but how that looms large.

See the crowdsourcing/Flickr discussion on this list for more info re: how use online resources to get research and organization work done.

I honestly don't even understand the safety part. Your board honestly believe thieves use the internet to plan robberies. I think the risks are way way way lower than the benefits. I mean the Lourve is online (http://www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home.jsp?bmLocale=en) and they have an extremely valuable collection. Ebay is not a pawn shop of museum thieves.

I know that this is the huge struggle for museums, especially regional ones, the webdivide. I encounter it at the magazine I write for as well. Moving from print to digital is a huge hurdle. But it is no longer something that _will_ happen- it has happened. If you are not online, in a very meaningful sense to a vast number of your audience, you don't really exist.