Collections are also being visited on the Web through online exhibits, which can either be used to increase awareness about an existing exhibit at a repository or can be unique to the Web. One advantage is that an online exhibit can reach a much broader audience than an in-house exhibit, which is limited to visitors who can travel to the repository. Online exhibits also pose little or no harm to the featured items, once a digital photo of the object or document is taken. Disadvantages to online exhibits include the inability of the user to get a true feel for the item itself, although improvements in 3-D imaging is quickly minimizing this problem. Another is that online exhibits can take almost as much time and money to create as a museum exhibit.
Many repositories can only invest in one type of exhibit.
This is important because of the relative lack of scholarly attention to this significant documentation in the past. It is also important as a means to increase access to the information these records contain. Having records available in digitized formats eliminates some of the accessibility problems that are usually associated with the archeological gray literature . The decision to digitize records and associated documentation involves making some of the same decisions needed for collections databases. Some of these decisions are easier to make than others.