Beyond the Tangible: Adults' Views on Authenticity in a Digitized Natural History Collection

Abstract

ABSTRACT Authenticity is an important aspect in natural history museums. Many museums aim to give their visitors an authentic experience. Now that increasingly more museums are digitizing their collection, the topic of digital authenticity has become relevant. To study how people interpret authenticity in a digital museum collection, we conducted 14 semi‐structured interviews with adults from the Netherlands about the digitized collection of a Dutch natural history museum. Overall, the interviewees perceived the digital collection as less authentic than the physical collection, but the digital collection did still have authentic qualities. Participants recognized the authenticity of the digitized objects, especially if the objects were accompanied by extra information, and if the objects looked lifelike. But the essence of the object was lost in the digital collection. Participants did value the digital collection for its educational purposes. In addition, visitors' personal interest impacted how they perceived and valued the authenticity of a digitized collection. Outcomes of this study suggest that although some of the authenticity is lost, digital collections may serve an important goal of providing information and of increasing the accessibility of the collection.

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