Why Are Museums Going Paperless?

Consider the various businesses or other organizations that could benefit if the workforce embraced electronic workflow. It would make sense that traditional offices could see a lot of advantages from going completely paperless, because employees use so much paper, ink, folders and other expensive products. All of these expenses would be eliminated if the business digitized.

It is obvious how schools, law firms, doctors’ offices and other institutions would see perks from following the same route. In a similar way, these sort of organizations would be able to benefit from the various cost, energy, efficiency and time savings, among other advantages.

Museums should also be placed on this list. Though many individuals might think that the crux of such institutions are the various showcases and exhibits, there’s a lot of paperwork changing hands behind the scenes. Invoices, contracts, records and even tickets could be digitized, saving the museums a significant amount of money over time. As such, a number of institutions have decided to leverage document management software.

Dallas Museum of Art goes paperless

According to The Dallas Morning News, the Dallas Museum of Art is among the galleries that have decided to eschew paper as much as possible inside the building. Thanks to an anonymous gift of $9 million, not only can the museum offer free admission, but the collection will be put online.

Businesses can also use this as motivation to place their own records online. The newspaper reported that administrators at the Museum of Art are digitizing because they want to make the historical information available to interested people worldwide. On a much smaller scale, companies might want to put common forms, records and other documents on a unified system so employees can tap into them when working remotely. This can make the business more productive, overall.

The Dallas Morning News also pointed out that many other museums have gone down this road – Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Yale University Art Gallery and others.

Various Detroit institutions going digital

Model D also reported that a number of institutions in Detroit are going paperless as well. For instance, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detroit Historical Museum and more have put historical collections online using conversion services.

Again, the news source suggested that administrators chose this course of action because they wanted to open up the information to the public, something that wouldn’t be possible without document management technology.