Since the start of COVID-19, more of the arts and culture sector have begun to move to online access, digital content and storage, as the need for more digital content surges. South Australia has an abundance of history, culture and knowledge to share, and digitising collections is 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 is a short-term project that aims to help increase the knowledge, capacity and understanding of the digitisation process, 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 will take stewardship of the project and continue to support the South Australian History Network with its task of digitising the distributed collections.