Digitisation of cultural heritage : A study of how four researchers who uses textile objects as source material experiences their work in our digital society

Our whole society is affected by the digitisation process. The policies of the Swedish government encourage the cultural heritage organizations to strategically develop the digitisation of their collections. These strategies often aim to make the collections more accessible but there is not much research about how researchers who have use of the digital information meet with the digital collections. The intention of this thesis is to study four researchers in the field of humanities who have textile objects as source material, and their professional experience of the digitisation of the cultural heritage. The researchers were interviewed in a semi-structured qualitative way, and the interviews were recorded and transcribed for analyzation of the data collected. The main result of the study is that the digital access of research material represents an improvement of their work when it comes to getting a quick and easy overview of their research subject which also represent a chance to improve the research quality by being able to compare and search for similar objects all over the world without having to travel to the collections. It has also become cheaper because of less travelling. Being able to take digital photos is also a big improvement compared to analogue photographs that are expensive and takes time to develop. One negative aspect that the study shows, is that the information in digital collections often lacks the quality that the researchers need, for example close-up pictures or relevant and reliable metadata. The researchers also experience an uncertainty in how to use the digital tools and computer programs in an effectively way and expresses a need for more knowledge about the different IT-systems. This thesis shows that the research topics seem to change due to the digitisation, partly because of the technological possibilities that new methods offers. Digital humanities points to this as a possibility to develop the research in the field of humanities and explore new areas that cannot be done without the digital methods.