Pigeons and beans

the integration of archives, libraries and museums: improving services and optimizing resources

Silvia Bruni, Cesvot

ADLUG meetingVitoria-Gasteiz, 17 ocober 2013

Aims

• Presentation of two experiences:– MAB Museums, archives and libraries;– New Subject headings for cultural heritage:

working group (BNCF, Cesvot; Tuscany Region, Tuscany Superintendency of archives)

• Propose to reflect upon the integration and collaboration between institutions having documents as objects of their mission

Our starting point: the Cesvot experience

Cesvot offers to voluntary associations services of cataloguing library materials and special collections, organization and description of archives and support management of current archives.

We are what we document

An organization is represented by the

complex of documents, that produces and

manages.

Our services

– cataloguing library collections of associations– organization of historical archives– support to manage current records an

documental flows

From the beginning, for us, the questions were:

• what do different kinds of documents have in common?

• Is it possible to create a common access to documents and activate an interdisciplinary dialogue?

Finally, we are not alone!

The “docuverse”

• Intentional documents: objects which have been created to be documents since their origin, having an expressive and/or communicative will;

• Unintentional documents: objects becoming document kept in a collection, acquiring informative potentiality, in time or change of observation point

The role of collections

Collections in museums, libraries or archives increase the value of any object as a

document, creating relationship between them

Libraries, art museums

• Collections of intentional documents

Archeological, anthropological and naturalistic museum

• Collections of unintentional documents. They certify the nature of the object as document

Archives

• Preservation of intentional and unintentional documents, maintaining the natural link between these

Discipline Documents Starting problem

Library science Intentional documents:

Book, DVD, etc: similar container different content

How to create multiple access to documents, singularly or by groups?

Archival science Intentional and unintentional documents:

correspondence, administrative documents, notes etc

How to rebuilt the unity of the archive, so to throw the natural link between documents?

Museology Intentional and unintentional documents

Artworks, objects, etc.

Each piece is unique but part of a “family”

How to exhibit, so to enhance links between documents

• Different starting problems determine different methodologies and development of separation, between institutions, consequently a darwinian world were the weak and strong struggle for visibility and resources are in short supply.

• Normally the ranking is – Museums– Libraries– Archives

Documents have occasional relationships

Attempts at dialogue

Documents professionals closed the gates. It was easier!

…and then came WWW

The web is a world where documents loose specific characteristics and become indifferentied documents.

The priority on the web is to consent to the user to find exhaustive information/documents useful to his need in the minor possible time

Vs

Google universe: take the first ten results and don't look a “gift horse” in the mouth!

New questions

• What do documents have in common? Descriptive metadata

• Is there a privileged access? The semantic description. The form can change, the content can be the same

Natural and organised documents system

• It maintains the characteristics of sistematicity, spontaneity, inclusivity of documents collections.

• An organized system is:– well preserved;

– described: all procedures are explicated; documents are described in databases;

– respectful of the characteristics of each kinds of documents;

– long lasting.

New Subject headings for culural heritage: working group

• How to apply the New subject headings to all kind of documents?

AIM

• To define guidelines on semantic description applied to non bibliogaphic documents.

Guidelines structure

We will start working on archive documents

• Abstract: applicability of the semantic description to archives– historical archives– current archives

• Identification of levels of description• How to use the new subject headings

– syntactic– terminological aspects– how to increase the thesaurus

• Other possible fields for accessing semantic fields (abstract, object, etc.)• Professional skills• Training • Interoperability between library catalogues and archival databases • Glossary• Bibliography

How we will work

• Survey (national and international level)

• Analysis of experiences

• Discussion (librarians, archivists, local and national level, professional associations)

• Elaboration

• Guidelines definition: draft

• Experimentation

• Guidelines pubblication

MAB Museums, archives and libraries

Italy

• MAB is a rising organization with the aim of integrating and coordinating archivists, librarians and museologists and the institutions in which these professionals are employed.

• The association was born in a period in which the crisis and the historic shortage of funds are making things difficult for all cultural institutions. It becomes even more important to create common projects and evaluate how to coordinate and share resources. Mainly it is an occasion to overcome, finally, the professional barriers that during a century have prevented from reflecting on finality on the common object of interest of libraries, archives and museums: the documents on different supports and having different aim.

MAB Working group

• Common projects museums-archives-libraries

• Languages and standards

• Professional training

Languages and standard group

• We have identified 3 areas of discussion:– Semantic description applied to all documents

typologies preserved by archives, libraries, museums– Standard comparaison (traditionally libraries have

more rigourous rules VS good practices in archives and museums) and interoperability of data (this point has been develeoped until now only in libraries)

– standards for the normalization of names of persons or institutions (e.g. ISAAD for archives recently born are differnt from REICAT dir libraries)

How we will work

• Presentation of experiences and competencies

• Individuation of areas of work, according the competencies in the group

• Discussion and experimentation

Expectations of both experiences:quality of information

• Make the search for information more efficient: completeness of data corresponding to the needs, regardless of the document kind

• Possibility of information exchange, regardless the kind of the documents and the adopted software

• completeness of the description of the documents and detection of standardized access

• enhancement of semantic access, starting point for a lot of research (I’m looking on something ....)

• Enhancement of multiplicity of informative resources; users have more organized collections of documents to question, cross, compare, opening up new research paths

• More documents avaliable, more questions and possible studies, more answers, new things and thoughts .

Expectations of both experiences:professional enrichment

• Professional skills exchange

• Share practices and methodologies

• New job opportunities (e.g. my experience: the application of librarian methodologies on the archive, gave me a new professionality to be spent)

• New paths, often, they enhance motivation

Expectations of both experiences:Economic impact

• More easier and efficient access to catalogues • More visibility of information resources• Increase the usage of institutions (e.g. starting from a

museum document the user can reach an archive or a library)

• More evidence for the value of the collections

More efficient use of resources

Pigeons and beens: conclusions

• Pigeons are documents, now frequently in cage, underused in all their information potential, users now, are forced to waste time trying to find information rather than using it, without being sure of their comprehensiveness.

• Been is the cooperation between MAB

Result:

a more efficient use of resources (competencies, professionality,

economic, ecc.)

Pigeons can eat beens and flyng happy in the docuverse