Aided by funding from EEA and Norway Grants, Heritage Malta has expanded its Digitisation Department, whose task it is to digitise and make available the tangible cultural and natural heritage assets entrusted to the agency.
The Digitisation Department are protecting and enhancing the value of Heritage Malta’s collections by utilising the latest equipment in the fields of photography, videography, cloudpoint and Lidar scanning, 3D handheld scanning, drones, and 3D printing to digitally capture and interpret artefacts.
Digitising several thousand artefacts in the Malta Maritime Museum is an important means of preserving these assets for the future and increasing access to them. Whilst digitisation as a preservation process that captures an object in high resolution is a valuable activity in itself, it is also a means of providing new experiences for museum visitors both in the museum and online. Details and inscriptions can be revealed and incorporated into rich multimedia exhibits that present alternate ways of learning about our cultural heritage.
Digital photography is a relatively quick and accessible means of providing visual information about our collection items. All of the physical artefacts that we are cataloguing at the Malta Maritime Museum are being professionally photographed to high standards, and the images are being attached to their catalogue records.