A case study: the National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci in Milan

Research question and methodology

Table of Contents:

The aim of this study is to understand the role of digital technologies and social media in the marketing and communications activities of museums. Our main research question is the following: How do museums leverage on digital technologies and social media to communicate and engage with their target?

As our objective is explorative, the appropriate methodology is the case study (Yin, 2009). We analyzed the digital strategy of National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci (Museo Nazionale della Sci-enza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci di Milano in Italian, hereafter,

216 Lala Hu and Mirko Olivieri

Table 12.1 Descriptive data of the case study NMST

Source: Author based on corporate website.

NMST) in Milan by conducting an interview with the museum’s Head of Digital activities, who has worked for the organization for 20 years; therefore, he is the appropriate key informant to provide an overview of the digital activities and strategies of the museum. The in-depth semi-structured interview was conducted in October 2019 and lasted over one hour. Upon the interviewee’s consent, the interview was recorded and fully transcribed. We triangulated the primary data with secondary data, including the museum’s webpages, social media accounts, and news articles regarding the museum. Researchers also carried out a participant observation in the NMST in December 2019. Table 12.1 contains the descriptive data of the case study.

Overview of the case study

The NMST was founded by the famous engineer Guido Uccelli (1885-1964) in 1953 to create an innovative museum in the center of Milan dedicated to industry and trade. Currently, its cultural heritage consists of the main collections (16,000 technical-scientific and artistic assets), an archive (paper and photographic), and a library (50,000 volumes and magazines), which showcase the history of science, technology, and industry from the 19th century to the present day. The NMST is the biggest museum of science and technology in Italy, and one of the most important museums of this kind in Europe. Their mission is to be a leader in informal education in Europe.

Regarding the digital team of the museum, four people are employed. Until a few years ago all activities were managed internally, today, due to

Name of the museum	National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci
Year of foundation	1953
Main collections	• The “Library of the sea” is a collection of about 3,600 volumes on the marine world in all its aspects; the Notebooks of NMST (i.e., workshop proceedings dedicated to telecommunications, scientific instrumentation, industrial heritage, naval collections, etc.); • The Scientific Records Documentary, consisting of over 2,850 thematic folders divided by topics and authors, preserves the preparatory documentation for Italy’s participation in the 1933 Universal Exposition of Chicago a Century of Progress; • 16,000 technical-scientific and artistic products collected from the 1930s onward are part of the Museum’s collections.
No. of employees	150
Website	www.museoscienza.org/english/

Cultural heritage on social media 217 the specificities of digital technologies, the necessary skills and specializations have expanded so that some activities are outsourced. However, the key informant pointed out that it is important to keep the management of the digital strategy internally, although a lot of museums cannot afford it because of budget constraints.

Target description

Based on the collected data, the target audience of the NMST has evolved over time. Historically, the museum has two very clear and easily identifiable targets: one is represented by schools and the other is families. Since the 1980s, the museum has heavily invested in educational activities and developed a relationship with the scholastic world, so many visitors are composed of large groups of schools. At the same time, the other important target is the world of families, that is, the parents who bring their children to the museum mainly to participate at the workshop activities, which have greatly strengthened the relationship with families and above all have strongly structured the having an audience returning to visit the museum.

An important aspect emerged from the analysis of the case study is that in the last six years, after the museum greatly strengthened its offer, it has finally reached a new audience made of adults without children. As the key informant pointed out:

Forty-year-old people have started to visit the museum as a place of culture without the need to visit it as a family unit. We see this phenomenon in the numbers, increase and at the same time, both thanks to the museum and the city of Milan, even foreign visitors are increasing: Milan has become a much more international city and this has also had following effects on museum visitors.

Hence, the target’s expansion is evident because the museum begins to become a place of culture not only for schools and families, but also for adults without children. However, the great “black hole” of the young people who do not attend school remains, but probably, to reach this 20-year-old target, there is still a long way to go because this is an audience very difficult to reach for a science and technology museum. Some results on this audience can be achieved, for example, with activities about augmented reality or digital experiments, but it is still difficult to reach and engage them.