Museum Big Data: Perceptions and Practices

This chapter reviews Big Data in museums, considering both theoretical perceptions and relevant practices in current Big Data projects in museums. Big Data, data analytics and data mining processes comprise relatively new fields of research and inquiry. They are expected to become core disciplines as data input increases and digital data collections from museums’ everyday activities and operations become larger and larger. The data include rich elaborated databases of museum objects and services, data related to museum visits, and the deluge of visitor-generated data on the internet and social media. Big Data in museums focus on developing methods and techniques to intentify new and uncover hidden, important and useful information, patterns, clusters and relationships among large sets of museum data. After reviewing the notion and characteristics of Big Data, we present connections between Big Data in museums and Big Data in libraries, arts, and humanities. We also offer several case studies from museums operating Big Data projects, which illustrate problems, prerequisites and potentials.