New digital platform promotes Western Australian regional museums and collections

A new digital platform that will share regional Western Australia's extensive collection of cultural and natural material with a worldwide audience is being developed, as part of the Western Australian Government's $1 million commitment to promote regional museums and collections.

Western Australian Culture and the Arts Minister David Templeman announced yesterday that the digital platform, to be called 'Collections WA', would be built and managed by the Western Australian Museum.

The platform will be a shared resource available for use across the entire collections sector, including museums, galleries, libraries, archives, historical societies and other community organisations, to make all Western Australian collections more accessible.

Minister Templeman today also presented the Australian Museums and Galleries Association Western Australia (AMaGA Western Australia) with a $301,000 Lotterywest grant to roll out an extensive two-year training program for regional collecting organisations, to support and enhance the digital platform.

This will include a series of regional workshops over two years, onsite visits and follow-up support for collecting groups, as well as building a master list of existing collections and bulk uploads of digital information to the Collections WA platform.

Minister Templeman advised "building a platform to showcase the wonders of Western Australia to the world will help to realise the true value of these community collections for social, education and tourism purposes.

"In today's digital world, it is absolutely essential for community collections to be accessible online. This is why providing training is so important to ensure that every community group that wants to share their collections with the world, can.

"The WA Government, through Lotterywest, is extremely proud to be supporting this training initiative which will help collecting groups across all of Western Australia to showcase the objects and stories that are important to them, in the best possible way.

AMaGA Western Australia currently provides professional services to develop and sustain more than 400 collecting organisations across WA, with the aim of encouraging wider audiences to engage more with our unique heritage and culture.

Minister Templeman added "being able to work strategically with collecting groups right across the sector is critical to making the most of funding outcomes and I congratulate the Western Australian Museum on its leadership of this initiative.

Work to develop a dedicated tourism portal for regional collections is also underway as part of an election commitment by the Western Australian Government. The portal will be linked to the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse, a multi-channel distribution network for tourism data that is currently published by more than 200 online distributors.

Western Australian Regional Development Minister Alannah MacTiernan concluded "digitising regional WA's fantastic historic and cultural collections not only brings this material to a potential global audience, it can help to drive tourism opportunities in our regional towns and communities."

Image top: Museum of Geraldton