National Museum of Korea’s Digital Asset Project

In 2015 the ROM was awarded funding from the National Museum of Korea, this organization supports programs for Korean galleries in overseas museums.  Over the years the Korean Galleries Overseas Support Program has collaborated with several institutions and participated in numerous projects, including renovation of exhibition environment, special exhibitions, loan of artifacts, publications, and academic consultation, all of which have contributed to promote the knowledge and appreciation of Korean history and culture. The ROM received funding from the National Museum of Korea and the Korean Galleries Overseas Support Program to temporarily hire a Korean Technician Assistant as part of the Digital Asset Project to help produce images and enter content about the ROM's Korean art collection into our online database. Currently, the public can only access 37 online images and data records of Korean artifacts in the collection. The aim is to improve the visual presence of the ROM's collection by putting all of its Korean Collection and exhibition information online, and making it assessable to the public. Using online exhibitions the public will view detailed information, and allow them to create sharable, personalized groupings of Korean artifacts, and offer object-related multi-media, which will bring new life and meaning to the ROM’s Korean collection.  The Korean Digital Asset project will assist us with capturing and managing all of the data related to our collection, including records connected to those objects, which will be cataloged and cross-referenced throughout our new collection management modules.  Korean objects will be accurately tracked and have easily configurable attributes, and be linked to an integrated thesaurus, which supports 22 languages. The Korean Digital Asset Project will allow us to link images and metadata to the 1302 Korean objects in our collection using the ROM’s new database system.  In order for the ROM to carry out this huge undertaking we required dedicated staff committed to the Korean Digital Asset Project.