Museum Collections and Computers

Museum Collections and Computers
Author: Lenore Sarasan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1983
Genre: Collectors and collecting
ISBN:

Download Museum Collections and Computers Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Museum Collections and Today's Computers

Museum Collections and Today's Computers
Author: Robert G. Chenhall
Publisher: Greenwood
Total Pages: 192
Release: 1988-08-24
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Download Museum Collections and Today's Computers Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

With the advent of the computer, electronic cataloging of museum collections is becoming a reality. This book is a useful guide to starting a computer cataloging project. It lays out the rudiments of computer retrieval, database organization, and image processing. It does not purport to dictate a particular computer system, since museums have individualized needs, but it offers case studies and examples to help museums make informed decisions. The glossary and bibliography of the book are also helpful. Museum libraries and academic collections supporting museum and computer studies will appreciate this introductory text. ARBA Written for museum executives, curators, and computer programmers and librarians with museum clients, this book offers a detailed exploration of the use of computers to record and control the physical objects that comprise museum collections. Equally applicable to collections contained in major museums and to those residing in the far more numerous small museums, Museum Collections and Today's Computers show how computers can be effectively and cost-efficiently used to perform a number of museum activities, including accession, registration, cataloging, inventory control, lending, exhibiting, and research. Throughout, the authors focus on the unique nature of museum collections and the special needs that result from uniqueness.

Digital Collections

Digital Collections
Author: Suzanne Keene
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2012-09-11
Genre: Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN: 113514544X

Download Digital Collections Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Suzanne Keene's pioneering book shows how museums and other cultural organizations fit into the new world of information and electronic communications and, most importantly, how they can take advantage of what it has to offer. By using new technology museums can build knowledge bases around information about collections. A collection object can be the central link for information about past and present, places, people and concepts, technologies, ways of working and evidence of the natural world. 'Digital Collections' explains how this vision can be realized. Sound, video and animations can be digitized and developed as a central resource that can be drawn on for many varied access routes: via the World Wide Web; CD ROMs; through on-gallery screens, and other future products still in development. These technological capabilities raise many compelling issues that need to be understood in order to successfully develop information collections. In this book Suzanne Keene reviews these issues clearly and comprehensively. Her accompanying Click-Through Guide provides the latest news and links to Internet information. Suzanne Keene is a senior manager of museum collections and information at the Science Museum, London. She led the UK LASSI project to select a collections information system for UK museums. This, with her experience in directing information technology and multimedia projects, means that she is accustomed to translating the highly technical concepts of information technology into high level issues for senior and strategic management.

Museum Documentation Systems

Museum Documentation Systems
Author: Richard B. Light
Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2014-05-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1483192423

Download Museum Documentation Systems Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Museum Documentation Systems

Collecting and Exhibiting Computer-Based Technology

Collecting and Exhibiting Computer-Based Technology
Author: Petrina Foti
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2018-11-05
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1351174320

Download Collecting and Exhibiting Computer-Based Technology Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Computer technology has transformed modern society, yet curators wishing to reflect those changes face difficult challenges in terms of both collecting and exhibiting. Collecting and Exhibiting Computer-Based Technology examines how curators at the history and technology museums of the Smithsonian Institution have met these challenges. Focusing on the curatorial process, the book explores the ways in which curators at the institution have approached the accession and display of technological artifacts. Such collections often have comparatively few precedents, and can pose unique dilemmas. In analysing the Smithsonian’s approach, Foti takes in diverse collection case studies ranging from DNA analyzers to Herbie Hancock’s music synthesizers, from iPods to born-digital photographs, from the laptop used during the filming of the television program Sex and the City to "Stanley" the self-driving car. Using her proposed model of "expert curation", she synthesizes her findings into a more universal framework for undertanding the curatorial methods associated with computer technology and reflects on what it means to be a curator in a postdigital world. Collecting and Exhibiting Computer-Based Technology offers a detailed analysis of curatorial practice in a relatively new field that is set to grow exponentially. It will be useful reading for curators, scholars, and students alike.

Museums and the History of Computing

Museums and the History of Computing
Author: Simone Natale
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2024-07-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1040127843

Download Museums and the History of Computing Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Museums and the History of Computing examines the critical role that cultural organizations, such as museums and galleries, play in shaping ‘digital heritage’: the cultural heritage surrounding computer technology. Focusing on digital technologies as objects and practices that museums collect, exhibit, and preserve for the future, this book highlights how and why museums play a crucial role in preserving the rich heritage of the digital world, constructing powerful narratives that help make it relevant to the public. It demonstrates that the museum can be a powerful means of safeguarding and interpreting ephemeral and continually changing digital technology, offering new pathways for rethinking the very meaning of digital objects and practices in contemporary societies. It provides practices and strategies for the preservation and exhibition of computing artifacts and ways to accommodate and respond to narratives about histories of computing that circulate in the public arena. Bringing together leading museum and university researchers and practitioners, and mobilizing cross-cutting debates and approaches in areas such as museum studies, cultural heritage, history of technology, anthropology, and media studies, this book challenges us to think critically about what ‘digital’ is when examined not only as a tool but as a cultural object deserving of attention and a place within the museum. Museums and the History of Computing is for museum studies students and researchers as well as museum practitioners – especially those with an interest in digital technology and heritage. It will be of interest to researchers and students interested in histories of computing and digital media and in digital media studies.

Recoding the Museum

Recoding the Museum
Author: Ross Parry
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2007-11-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1134259662

Download Recoding the Museum Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Why has it taken so long to make computers work for the museum sector? And why are museums still having some of the same conversations about digital technology that they began back in the late 1960s? Does there continue to be a basic ‘incompatibility’ between the practice of the museum and the functions of the computer that explains this disconnect? Drawing upon an impressive range of professional and theoretical sources, this book offers one of the first substantial histories of museum computing. Its ambitious narrative attempts to explain a series of essential tensions between curatorship and the digital realm. Ultimately, it reveals how through the emergence of standards, increased coordination, and celebration (rather than fearing) of the ‘virtual’, the sector has experienced a broadening of participation, a widening of creative horizons and, ultimately, has helped to define a new cultural role for museums. Having confronted and understood its past, what emerges is a museum transformed – rescripted, re calibrated, rewritten, reorganised.