[ih] Museum archiving (was: Re: IENs)

[John Day]

A slight correction, Craig. 

I am a recognized historian in the History of Science and Cartography, primarily 17thC-18thC China and published widely. I have spent considerable time in archives across Asia and Europe and with private collectors. My experience goes well beyond computer museums, as I told Dave off-list, including junk rooms in the Vatican. (Sometimes one finds things in the oddest places.) ;-)

You are right about access. Electronic copies can be nice, but there are important things about provenance, etc. that one can only learn by seeing the artifact itself.

John



> On May 8, 2021, at 08:50, Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Dave:
> 
> You asked about museums and their commitment to archiving.  As someone who was trained as a historian and still does occasional archival work for fun, I'll hazard a somewhat structural answer and then John D. can comment on computing museums.
> 
> One can assess archives on at least three dimensions:
> 
> * Commitment to ensuring their collections are preserved for centuries to come.  This requires money (for fire suppression and temperature monitoring and the like) and also requires careful evaluation and planning (preserving paper for instance, is different from preserving paintings, which is different from preserving fabrics).
> 
> * Commitment to creating finding aids (catalogs, indexes, collection descriptions) that enable researchers to find items in the collections.
> 
> * Commitment to making their collections available for research (or public display).
> 
> The last may surprise folks but there are a number of institutions that have strong views about who should and should not be able to use their collections, usually to the detriment of scholarship and the public interest.
> 
> (And, if you want an example of exactly how not to do all three, consider the team of scholars who were originally given control of the Dead Sea Scrolls).
> 
> Craig
> 
> -- 
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