About the Project

It all started when five museums: The Museum of King Jan III's Palace at Wilanów, Museum of the History of Polish Jews, National Museum in Lublin, National Museum in Szczecin, and Castle Museum in Łańcut, wanted to improve access to the cultural resources they care for and make them available online in one, common place. Many months later, thanks to funding from European Funds and resources from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in Poland, the implementation of the project titled "www.muzeach" began.
However, creating digital collections would not be possible without digitization (documentation of objects in the form of digital representations) and the enormous possibilities offered by modern image registration techniques. This was the basis of the project. We used 5 digitization methods:

1. Documentary photography
2. Gigapixel photography – most often used for paintings, it allows you to view them in very high magnification and notice details that are unnoticeable during normal viewing
3. RTI documentation (Reflectance Transformation Imaging) – enables the simulation of viewing a given object with a change of lighting – it is particularly attractive for flat objects with a varied texture, as it is the protrusions on the surface of the object that become better visible thanks to this technique
4. GIS Geographics Information System – allows to assign to specific points on the map, for example, photos of monuments and information about them, as well as archival data or technical documentation
5. 3D documentation using photogrammetry and structured light scanning techniques

In addition to professional visual documentation, we also focused on providing detailed and interesting information about museum objects and providing educational materials for them.

Although the aim of the project can be summed up in one sentence, its achievement would not have been possible without the involvement and coordinated work of many people! The project team consisted of, among others, historians and art conservators, photographers, specialists in advanced digitization techniques, educators, programmers, designers, editors and translators – in total dozens of specialists from different parts of Poland! Their work, which lasted over three years, and was additionally challenged by the pandemic, was organized around 10 tasks:

1. Project administration and coordination of actions
2. Digitization and publication of 2D museum pieces
3. Digitization and publication of digital collections using advanced 2D presentation techniques (Gigapixel and RTI)
4. Digitization and publication of 3D digital collections using photogrammetric techniques and structured light scanning
5. Documentation and publication of spatial data using the Geographical Information System (GIS)
6. Building a web service with a multi-search engine for digital museum collections
7. Promotion
8. Infrastructure development – purchases related to the development of server rooms, digitization workshops, construction works related to the adaptation of rooms
9. Employee training
10. Educational activities

We can all enjoy the effects of these complex works, in one place, free of charge.

The project was co-financed by European Funds and by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in Poland. It was implemented under the Operational Program Digital Poland for 2014-2020, Priority axis no. 2 „E-administration and open government", action no. 2.3 „Digital accessibility and usefulness of public sector information", sub-action no. 2.3.2 „Digital access to cultural resources. ".

Beneficiary: Museum of King Jan III's Palace at Wilanów

Partners: Museum of the History of Polish Jews, National Museum in Lublin, National Museum in Szczecin, Castle Museum in Łańcut

Total project cost: 12,172,215.58 PLN

Amount of funding: 9,247,929.94 PLN