Museums and Cataloguing: prologue to a way ahead Layna White San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
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Transcript of Museums and Cataloguing: prologue to a way ahead Layna White San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
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Museums and Cataloguing: prologue to a way ahead
Layna White
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
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What is cataloguing in museums?
• Museum professionals have general principles and practices for describing and documenting objects
– in particular, for describing and documenting core aspects about objects (aspects such as creators, titles, materials, dates – aka tombstone information)
• Before Cataloguing Cultural Objects museum professionals had (and continue to have) sources or models for uniformly selecting, ordering, and formatting core data about objects
• Museum professionals, as stewards of cultural objects, capture details about an object’s history of exhibition, publication, valuation, conservation treatment (including images of before, during, and after treatments), and so forth
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Motivations for cataloguing museum objects
To help museum staff acquire, manage, and share objects by:
▪ finding physical objects – e.g., retrieving objects from storage for examination or exhibition
▪ distinguishing between and/or comparing objects – e.g., to inform collection development and interpretation
▪ bringing together related objects (where “related” may be transitory) – e.g., in an exhibition or exhibition catalogue
▪ capturing current research and supporting new research
▪ explaining or interpreting objects – e.g., by posting wall labels in galleries or publishing cataloguing data on the Web
▪ tracking the life-cycles of objects – e.g., documenting provenance, histories of exhibition and interpretations
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Motivations for cataloguing museum objects
To help museum audiences to:
▪ find representations of objects, typically on the Web (where “representations” are typically core data and images)
▪ make sense of what they are reading and viewing, on the Web, in museum galleries, in exhibition catalogues, etc.
▪ bring together related representations, typically on the Web (where “related” may be transitory)
▪ use what is found, read, viewed, and experienced
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Who catalogues in museums?
• There are many hands – over many years – in cataloguing records for museum objects
– with cataloguing data contributed by individuals with different educational and professional backgrounds: for instance, collection information managers, registrars, curators, and conservators (and non-staff?)
• Curators (or their surrogates) are the arbiters of object descriptions, particularly when descriptions are published in exhibition catalogues, wall labels, or the Web
• Museum professionals typically learn to catalogue on-the-job, rather than experiencing specialized, formal education in cataloguing
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Enter CCO
Motivations for using standards like CCO in museums
■ promote consistency and predictability across representations of objects
■ support attempts to make data more portable, shareable, and usable
■ common source for modifying or validating local guidelines
– point of departure when there are no written, local guidelines
– charting a way ahead: e.g., from here on out, use CCO
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local needs | local context | local resources
The collections management system (CMS) is – in theory – the central location or reference for (most of) what we know about an object
Page 1 of what we know about New York City 2
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Explanation of Title – as of May 29, 2003
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local needs | local context | local resources | multiple audiences
SFMOMA cataloguing travels from the CMS to public venues
• collections access online – a collaboration between Collections Information and Access, Web, Information Systems and Services, and Education departments
• various multimedia interactive features developed by the Education department
• content aggregation projects participated in by Collections Information and Access
• wall labels prepared by Curatorial and Publications for display in galleries
• exhibition catalogues prepared by Curatorial and Publications
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local needs | local context | local resources | multiple audiences
■ many hands (over many years) in SFMOMA cataloguing:
– with a mix of curators, collection information managers, conservators, registrars, and educators contributing data
– with the Collections Information and Access department keeping an eye on the big picture
■ ambiguity, uncertainty, and the dynamic nature of data
– particularities of modern and contemporary art
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Materials/Techniques 2003
Materials/Techniques 2006
collections access online
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Using CCO in museums
• Serving the diverse needs of museum staff and museum audiences
• How do our descriptions and choice of words affect discovery (of representations and objects), understanding, and engagement?
• Working with/around limitations of local collections management systems
• How does CCO diverge from local practices – or vice versa?
• Controlling how object descriptions are expressed, when pushed out from local systems, into shared spaces (e.g., in content aggregation projects)
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SFMOMA
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Museum community responses to CCO
– bottoms-up – collaborative – top-down approach to implementing?
– early adopters – demonstrations – vendors?
– specialized, formal education in cataloguing – museum studies programs – professional development?