More of the arts and culture sector continues to move online, with online access to digital content and storage increasing at a rapid pace since the start of COVID-19. South Australia has an abundance of history, culture and knowledge to share, and digitising collections is now a major way that culturally significant items, documents and information can be shared with the world.

In this climate the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Arts South Australia provided funding to develop training, resources, and a community of practice for digitisation of collections across South Australia. With support from a Digital Access Consultative Group (DACG) made up of South Australia’s core collecting organisations, Digitising Collections SA was a short-term project that aimed to scope the state of digitisation in South Australia, help increase the knowledge, capacity and understanding of the digitisation process for all organisations, and provide long-term resources for any individual or organisation embarking on their digitisation journey.

At the conclusion of the pilot , the History Trust of South Australia took stewardship of the project and continue to support the South Australian History Network with its task of digitising the distributed collections.