Museums and Cataloguing: prologue to a way ahead

Layna White

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

Explanation of Title – as of May 29, 2003

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

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

Materials/Techniques 2003

Materials/Techniques 2006

collections access online

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)

SFMOMA

Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Metropolitan Museum of Art

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?