Online Limburgs Museum: A treasure trove of stories

Ons Limburgs Museum 

Heritage organisations in Limburg bring together the stories of inhabitants and Limburg collections in the online museum.

There was an interesting lead-up to this initiative, says director Bert Mennings. “In our new positioning, identity, transformation and Limburg’s role within the European Union take centre stage. And it includes questions such as: What is Limburg? Who is the Limburger? What kind of developments are taking place in the province? And what is Limburg’s position in a European context?”

Online and offline museum

The museum attempts to answer these questions in various places: not only in the museum building in Venlo itself but also on location throughout the province, and in the online museum. This is how the Limburgs Museum manages to reach as many people as possible, including people who are unable or unwilling to visit the actual museum building.

Participation and collaboration

A growing number of museums liaise closely with their visitors nowadays: they are interested in the visitors’ experiences and ask them to contribute to the collection and programming. We see less of this type of museum-visitor exchange online, says Mennings. "We hope to generate a treasure trove of stories. We invite ordinary people and organisations to share their stories and we hope that this will inspire them to encourage others to do the same.”

The Limburgs Museum is not alone in this endeavour. “Together with more than 60 partners, we put together the stories of Limburg. This includes stories from the past as well as modern-day stories. We want to create a linked open data (Opens an external link) structure, so that we can have one place where all the different organisations can upload their content. We are also planning to develop a customer data platform in the future so that we can personalise the feed of every visitor, without them ending up in their own little bubble.”

Finding stories

Getting Limburgers to share their stories has proven to be a bit of a challenge. “At present the stories are just trickling in, but what we have received so far is extremely interesting. This fits perfectly with our mission to create more impact: it is not so much about the quantity but more about the quality. At the same time, we are looking for ways to get more people involved online."

One solution is to be present in places where people are more likely to share their stories. For example, this summer will see a number of events remembering the flooding that occurred in Limburg in 1993. It is more than likely that this will prompt people to remember stories about the event. The museum is looking at ways to retrieve these stories so that they become a lasting part of the collective memory of Limburg.

This is only the beginning

For Mennings, this is only the beginning of the experiment. "Who knows what different things we will still be able to add and which target groups we can still reach, including people across the provincial borders? In the pilot we mainly targeted local culture lovers and social stakeholders, but we are keen to expand this group. Ons Limburgs Museum has our fullest attention and we shall continue to develop it.”

Mennings regards Ons Limburgs Museum as a pilot for the rest of the cultural sector. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we had an online National History Museum? We could also get other cultural institutions such as the performing arts on board. We are also looking at establishing collaborations with partners in Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg to see if we can scale up our activities to an EU regional level. We are a global leader when it comes to digital transformation and we would like to share our knowledge with the rest of the world.”

Three of Bert’s lessons

• We create exclusive content for our digital and physical environments.
• The digital and physical museum experience is increasingly converging.
• We ask people and organisations to share their stories and hope that their enthusiasm will inspire others.