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Museum informatics

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Museum informatics[1] is an interdisciplinary field of study that refers to the theory and application of informatics by museums. It represents a convergence of culture, digital technology, and information science[2]. In the context of the digital age facilitating growing commonalities across museums, libraries and archives, its place in academe has grown substantially and also has connections with digital humanities.[3]

In all ages, museums are responsible for obtaining, storing, and exhibiting objects of different kinds of objects from art, cultural heritage, natural history, science, to technological inventions. However, modern museums are not only repositories of objects; they are repositories of knowledge.[1] They are more like an information service organization, store information and share knowledge.[1]

After years of studies, the museum professionals and visitors have found their understanding of roles museums play largely changed by the introduction of new information technologies in museums.[4] Today’s visitors to museums expect instant access to large amount of information about every object in the museum’s collections. As the needs and expectations change, the users of museum information resources are galvanizing museums to make appropriate changes.[4] Besides, museum researchers and professionals have began to explore the impact of information science and technology on the people who use museum resources.[4]

Overview

Museum informatics is an emerging field of academic study focused on the intersection between information technologies, museums and their staff members, and online museum data and services. The more general cultural informatics deals with, for example, information design and interaction, digital curation, cultural heritage description and access, social media, and the application of digital tools. Museums have embraced the application of museum informatics which has been supported by US federal grants and in particular by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).[5] The older term "museum studies" refers more to traditional curatorial perspectives rather than relating to the use of information science and information technology.[6]

Archives and Museum Informatics is a leading journal in the field of museum informatics. University courses relating to museology include a component on museum informatics.[7][8] The Museum Computer Network (MCN) in the United States holds an annual conference and runs the MCN-L electronic mailing list. The Museums Computer Group (MCG) in the United Kingdom also holds meetings relevant to museum informatics. The ICHIM conference series in Europe and the Museums and the Web conference series in North America cover aspects of museum informatics. Other relevant conferences include the EVA Conferences. Books are available on the subject.[9][10]

There have been a number of collaborative projects in the field of museum informatics such as The Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) , Artstor, the Museum Informatics Project (MIP),[6] and steve.museum. The International Council of Museums (ICOM), through Cary Karp, was instrumental in initiating the ".museum" top-level domain for museums on the Internet. Companies such as Archives & Museum Informatics in Canada and Cogapp in the United Kingdom help museums in using information technology effectively.

History

The earliest references to museum informatics in English are from Archives and Museum Informatics a newsletter and journal published on the subject from 1987–1996.[11] In the early 1990s, museum informatics projects and services developed at numerous American universities.[12] Cultural informatics was introduced into library and information science education in 2000 at the Pratt Institute School of Library and Information Science in New York.[2] Graduate courses devoted to museum informatics were offered from at least 2001.[7] PhD theses were using "museum informatics" in the title by 2004.[13] By 2007, an academic reader, Museum Informatics: People, Information, and Technology in Museums, edited by Paul F. Marty and Katherine Burton Jones, was published as part of the Routledge Studies in Library and Information Science.[9]

For the past few decades, we have witnessed unprecedented changes with respect to the use of museum information resources.[14] The changes have resulted in new levels of information sharing, accessing and new forms of interactions between museum professionals and visitors.[14] These changes have manifested most clearly in the relationships between museums, museum websites, and museum visitors.[14]

Museums are at a turning point in history, as a ‘technology-driven mutation’ in the evolution of ‘cultural heritage institutions’ is going to redefine the domain and blur boundaries for museum institutions.[15] The future of museums is beginning to be shaped by computer scientists who are serving for the museum missions in the recent tradition of museum operation.[15] What's more, the introduction of new information resources and technologies in museums has considerably changed the understanding of the role of museums for museum visitors. [16]

Resources

To get a better understanding of informatics in museums, we need to consider the various recourses which museums need. Among the many types of information resources that are crucial to museums, the most important information one that any museum possesses is its collection of artifacts.[16]

The extensive information that museum professionals possess about the objects is of equal importance compare to the artifacts themselves.[16] For example, when a museum acquires a new collection of exhibits, information about each object will be expertly recorded and sorted by Museum professionals.[16] These museum professionals also need to record specific data about each object such as nomenclature classifications, physical dimensions, material analyses, designations, artifact histories, scholarly remarks, research notes, etc.[16] Except for that, they are responsible for maintaining related information resources such as donor files, accession records, exhibit histories, research studies, temporary loan records, visitor attendance reports, information requests, etc.[16]

Information Organization and Access

Before the 1960s, for most museums, information resources about artifacts were mostly organized into paper records and card files.[17] For this kind of paper-based system, there were many drawbacks, such as in terms of information access: only a limited number of individuals could access the files at any time and the entrance was restricted to only a few data points.[16] This situation can be improved mainly by the introduction of computerized systems for museum cataloging.[16] Thanks to the modern organization systems, Museum professionals are now able to search and sort digital records about their collections using almost any database field.[16] Also, they could store more information about their artifacts, and they could share data more easily with other institutions.[16]

Technology

In the early 1960s, the first attempts to computerize museum collections happened when museums professionals began exploring the potential benefits of automating collections management with different computerized systems.[18] These early systems were used to store the descriptive information for artifacts in museums.[16] Soon after that, a lot of institutions started to use mainframe systems to store data in electronic format.[16] Nowadays, as the use of the Internet became more widespread than before, museum professionals found more ways to share data about the collections.[16]

Digital Museums

New technologies and online museums mean easier access and wider use of information resources that may previously have been more firmly controlled by the governing institution.[19]

There are some concerns among museum professionals who worry that when museums digitize their collections and let digital resources available online, they lose control over the museum’s intellectual property and other copyrighted materials.[16] In order to protect their intellectual property, some institutions restrict the access to certain types of data or make the content they control difficult to reproduce.[16]

Another kind of concern about digital museum is whether visitors will stop visiting physical museums as more information about museum collections is available online.[16] Since many museums offer extremely high resolution images and some even three-dimensional representations of their artifacts online, museum professionals wonder whether museum visitors will still bother to visit the real thing.[16] Fortunately for museum professionals, recent surveys have provided compelling evidence that online museums actually drive physical museum attendance instead of discouraging physical visits.[16]

Interactions

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Marty, Paul F. (2011). "Museum Informatics". Florida State University, USA. Retrieved August 2, 2011.
  2. ^ a b Cultural informatics, School of Library and Information Science, Pratt Institute, New York, USA.
  3. ^ Digital humanities.
  4. ^ a b c Marty, Paul (2010). Museum Informatics. Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, Third Edition.
  5. ^ CHART, Pratt Institute, New York, USA.
  6. ^ a b "Museum Informatics Project (MIP)". University of California, Berkeley, USA. Retrieved August 2, 2011.
  7. ^ a b Heidorn Bryan; Twidale, Michael (2007). "LIS 490MUG / LIS490MUU Museum Informatics". Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS). University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. Retrieved August 2, 2011. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help); Unknown parameter |lastauthoramp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help)
  8. ^ Marty, Paul F. (2011). "LIS 5590 Museum Informatics". Florida State University, USA. Retrieved August 2, 2011.
  9. ^ a b Marty, Paul F.; Jones, Katherine Burton (2007). Museum Informatics: People, Information, and Technology in Museums. Routledge Studies in Library and Information Science. ISBN 978-0-8247-2581-5. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lastauthoramp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help)
  10. ^ Jones-Garmil, Katherine, ed. (1997). The Wired Museum: Emerging Technology and Changing Paradigms. American Association of Museums. ISBN 0-931201-36-5.
  11. ^ Archives & Museum Informatics Newsletter (1987–1996).
  12. ^ Lessons From The Berkeley Museum Informatics Project, CAUSE. 1994.
  13. ^ Crofts, Nicholas, Museum informatics : the challenge of integration, University of Geneva, Switzerland, 2004.
  14. ^ a b c Marty, P. F. (January 01, 2007). Museum websites and museum visitors: Before and after the museum visit. Museum Management and Curatorship, 22, 4, 337-360.
  15. ^ a b Knell, S. (2015). The shape of things to come: museums in the technological landscape. Museum and Society, 1(3), 132-146. Retrieved from https://journals.le.ac.uk/ojs1/index.php/mas/article/view/40
  16. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Marty, P.F. (2010). Museum Informatics. In Bates, M.J. & Maack, M.N. (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science (pp. 3717-3725). 3rd Edition. New York: Taylor & Francis, Inc.
  17. ^ Chenhall, R.G. Museum Cataloging in the Computer Age; American Association for State and Local History: Nashville, TN, 1975.
  18. ^ Vance, D. Museum computer network: Progress report. Museologist 1975, 135, 3–10.
  19. ^ Zorich, D.M. Introduction to Managing Digital Assets: Options for Cultural and Educational Organizations; Getty Trust Publications: Los Angeles, CA, 1999.

Bibliography

  • Marty, P.F., Rayward, W.B., and Twidale, M.B. (2003). Museum Informatics. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 37, 259–294.
  • Marty, P.F. (2003). Museum Informatics. In Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science (pp. 1906–1913). New York: Marcel Dekker.
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