Libraries,
archives, and museums all strive to provide an access point to
knowledge. These institutions provide accessibility to knowledge both
created and maintained by mankind. LAMs share many areas of common
practice including meticulous organization of materials, access to
said materials and the maintenance and preservation of these cultural
records. While traditionally books are in the realm of libraries,
paper documents in the realm of archives and objects are the realm of
museums, all of these materials can be essentially be considered
cultural documents.
In
a 1997 article, Micheal Buckland attempts to discern the nature of
what is a document. Whereas the term document has referred to mainly
textual records in the past, Buckland contests that, "The
evolving notion of 'document' among Otlet, Briet, Schurmeyer, and the
other documentalists increasingly emphasized whatever functioned as a
document rather than traditional physical forms of documents"
(Buckland 1997: 808). The function of documents being objects which
could "tell one about the world that produced it" (Buckland
1997: 808). Through this lens we see that physical objects in museums
as well as textual objects from museums and archives are all cultural
documents.
Liz
Bishoff points out that while "we" (information
professionals) divide our institutions along material category lines,
the general public does not (Bishoff, 2004). A person who is looking
for information does not necessarily care where the information comes
from, be it a library, museum or archive. The differences between
these institutions are seen by professionals in the field but not by
the average information consumer.
Three
areas of common practice between LAMs include organization of
materials, access to materials and the creation of cultural records.
The overall practices are similar whereas the individual institutions
may have slightly different methods of implementation. The examples
below are from the websites of the Boston Public Library (BPL) and
the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA). Both of these institutions
meticulously collect and organize information.
A
screenshot from the BPL's online catalog and the MFA's collection
search show that the items collected by each of these institutions
are categorized and grouped into unique categories. The BPL
screenshot shows subject search results for "Parody Films"
while the MFA screenshot shows results from the museums postcard
collection. The categorization and organization of collection
materials is a shared commonality throughout various LAMs.
In
looking at the mission statements of these two institutions share a
focus of not only collecting and organizing cultural materials but
also one of preserving cultural items and provide access to and
direct encounters with their collections. The BPA's mission statement
is succinct and states, "The Boston Public Library's mission is
to preserve and provide access to historical records of our society,
and to serve the cultural, educational, and informational needs of
the people of the City and the Commonwealth." The MFA's mission
statement spans nearly a page and includes a dedication to "house
and preserve preeminent collections and aspires to serve a wide
variety of people through direct encounters with works of art."
The terms preserve can be found in both statements, as can phrases
regarding exposure of collections to the public.
As discussed in the article, "Digital Museums and Diverse Cultural Knowledges: Moving Past the Traditional Catalog," museums have trended toward creating object metadata in order to classify and organize their collections. In this era of digital collections,museums have been working on creating common standards in order to share information, building on the experience of libraries to provide access to their collections. "In a museum world populated by massive heterogenous collections of unique largely nontextual objects, traditions of consortia forming and data sharing among institutions are weak, and the history of standards development is relatively short compared with the experience of libraries (Srinivasan, 2009)."
LAMs are intrinsically linked by their dedication to collecting, organizing, preserving and creating access to cultural heritage resources. As we enter a strongly digital era, we will benefit from collaborating and learning from one another. As Kirchhoff concludes in his paper "Archives, Libraries, Museums and the Spell of Ubiquitous Knowledge" which reviews the BAM German cultural heritage portal, "examples given suggest that success in the acquisition of knowledge and he expansion of scholarship is possible by linking knowledge resources previously separate, through an enhanced knowledge organization (Kirchhoff, 2008)."
References:
References:
Bishoff,
Liz. “The Collaboration Imperative”, Library
Journal,
January (2004): 34-35.
"BPL
- Mission." BPL -
Mission.
N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.bpl.org/general/trustees/mission.htm>.
Buckland,
Michael K. "What Is a ``Document''?.", JASIS
48.9 (1997): 804-809.
Kirchhoff,
Thomas, Werner Schweibenz, and Jörn Sieglerschmidt. "Archives,
libraries, museums and the spell of ubiquitous knowledge."
Archival
Science
8, no. 4 (2008): 251-266.
"Mission
Statement." Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston.
N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.mfa.org/about/mission-statement>.
Srinivasan,
Ramesh, Robin Boast, Jonathan Furner, and Katherine M. Becvar.
"Digital museums and diverse cultural knowledges: Moving past
the traditional catalog." The
Information Society 25,
no. 4 (2009): 265-278.
