Time was when art museums lovingly housed their collections, hosted occasional visiting exhibits, and offered educational talks to typically small, but dedicated, audiences. Those activities remain central to the mission of the The Ball State University Museum of Art, a stunningly renovated facility with galleries that provide a first-rate showcase for its collections and a valuable cultural resource for the university, the Muncie community, and Indiana.

Today, however, the information age presents a whole new world of challenges and opportunities. No longer can a museum remain exclusively in a comfortable--some might say stodgy--environment and expect to flourish. The digital world is here, and it beckons.

The Ball State University Museum of Art is rising to the occasion and has embarked on an ambitious high-technology mission. Mindful of its notable, well-rounded holdings, the museum is on course to make its collection even more available to patrons and public alike.

"Museums are 19th-century creatures," says Peter Blume, director of the Museum of Art. "New technologies have enabled museums to reinvent themselves. The old hierarchies don't have to exist."

This year the museum is conducting a pilot digitization project to photograph 500 of its more than 11,000 works of art--a cross section of its diverse European, Asian, African, South American, and Native American holdings. The photography is part of a comprehensive effort to ultimately enable electronic access for patrons, scholars and historians, teachers, and students.

Blume, who was named director of the museum in 2003, had supervised a similar digitization effort when he directed the Allentown, Pennsylvania, art museum. The first step in the process, he explains, is to convert the museum's database to a new collections management system that will facilitate the exporting of the database to the Internet. By implementing such innovations and adding high-quality digital images of its collection, the Ball State Museum of Art may qualify as a "best-practice" institution in its use of instructional materials and information technology. To be sure, the museum's collection will be even more accessible as original source material for purposes of research.

"I would very much like to see our collection more broadly integrated in the university's curriculum," says Blume. "Once the works of art become more accessible electronically through our digital project, they may be."

A key beneficiary of the digitization project is Muncie Community Schools (MCS), which is collaborating with the museum in the development of interactive lesson plans for K-12 students. Representatives of MCS, University Libraries, the Department of Art, the Office of Information Technology, and Teachers College have worked closely with Blume and the museum staff, including associate director Ruta Saliklis. The successful completion of the project will pave the way to pursue funding partners that spearhead museum digitization projects. Ultimately, young students and lifelong learners from Muncie to Mozambique will find great art at Ball State--right at their fingertips!