Digital Culture and Documental Heritage: An overview of digital transformation at São Paulo's museums, archives and documentation centers
Digital transformation in institutions that preserve documentary heritage allows remote access to information that before was restricted to visits to these collections, limiting the cultural experience to those with possibility of going to the places where they were stored. Digitization of processes and collections in institutions of this nature guarantees, in addition to preserving information, the dissemination of informational content of documentary heritage without geographical limitations, increasing access to cultural experience and generating the possibility of new interactions between public and institutions. For this reason, operate the digital transformation in collections is mandatory, in order to meet demands of habitual users and meet the expectations of the new users, already acquainted to remote cultural experiences. This study aims to demonstrate the state of digital transformation in São Paulo’s archives and museums through the analysis of the possibilities of remote access to collections. Museums, archives and documentation centers with active registration at the Brazilian National Archives Council and located in São Paulo make up the scope of the analyzed sample. We carried out a structured observation of institutional websites, guided by data collection instruments developed in order to elucidate: the intensity of the presence of the institutions in the global network of computers and the degree of digitization of collections and the existence of searching tools to access collections when digitized. After the data analysis, we generated graphical demonstrations of the state of digital transformation and the possibilities of collections remote access, concluding that most of São Paulo’s institutions are gradually operating the digital transformation in their processes and collections in order to preserve information in them contained, allow remote access and provide the users a digital cultural experience.