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This article was downloaded by: [University of Calgary]On: 01 September 2014, At: 06:50Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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Remembering things differently:museums, libraries and archivesas memory institutions and theimplications for convergenceHelena Robinson aa Department of Museum Studies, Faculty of Arts and SocialSciences , The University of Sydney , R.C. Mills Building A26,Sydney , NSW , 2006 , AustraliaPublished online: 26 Sep 2012.
To cite this article: Helena Robinson (2012) Remembering things differently: museums, librariesand archives as memory institutions and the implications for convergence, Museum Managementand Curatorship, 27:4, 413-429, DOI: 10.1080/09647775.2012.720188
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2012.720188
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DIGITAL HERITAGE
Remembering things differently: museums, libraries and archives asmemory institutions and the implications for convergence
Helena Robinson*
Department of Museum Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of Sydney,R.C. Mills Building A26, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
(Received 6 June 2011; final version received 28 March 2012)
In Australia and internationally, museums, libraries and archives are oftendescribed as ‘memory institutions’ in discussions about their possible convergencein the digital and physical realms. Yet a wider variety of organisations, such asschools, universities, media corporations, government or religious bodies couldalso legitimately be ascribed this title. In what special ways do museums, librariesand archives engage with the concept of ‘memory’? Do the roles of theseorganisations in shaping ‘memory’ align sufficiently for this concept to form thebasis on which to ground arguments in favour of convergence? This paperinterrogates the idea of ‘memory institutions’ and proposes that such a genericconcept is not especially productive in facilitating the thorough, critical analysisnecessary to highlight both the synergies and discords in the history and memory-making techniques of museums, libraries and archives.
Keywords: museums; archives; libraries; memory institutions; interpretation;convergence
Introduction
In tandem with similar trends in the UK, USA, Canada and New Zealand, and
responding to a variety of financial, government and technological motivations, a
number of Australian museums have converged their physical facilities with local
libraries, galleries and archives.1 Not only has this created a new organisational
model, it also marks an important turning point in how preservation and
interpretation of culturally significant material is understood and institutionally
framed. In parallel with these developments, enthusiasm for the digital convergence
of diverse collections has continued to gain pace internationally, setting an agenda
for universal access to digital collections information originating from different
domain sources.
Arguments for convergence are commonly accompanied by a conventional
wisdom that collapses libraries, archives and museums together under the blanket
definition of ‘memory institutions’ (Cathro 2001; Dempsey 2000; Dupont 2007;
Enser 2001; Gomez 2010; Hedstrom and King 2004; Miller 2000; Tanackovic and
Badurina 2009; Tibbo and Lee 2010), along with the even broader identification of
these collecting domains as ‘knowledge organisations’ (Given and McTavish 2010;
*Email: [email protected]
Museum Management and Curatorship
Vol. 27, No. 4, October 2012, 413�429
ISSN 0964-7775 print/ISSN 1872-9185 online
# 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2012.720188
http://www.tandfonline.com
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Macnaught 2008). However, is this loose terminological conflation really conducive
to achieving the successful integration of collecting institutions?
I argue in this paper that, rather than revealing the essential affiliation between
museums, libraries and archives, their sweeping classification as ‘memory institu-tions’ in the public sector and the academy oversimplifies the concept of memory,
and marginalises domain-specific approaches to the cataloguing, description,
interpretation and deployment of collections that lead museums, libraries and
archives to engage with history, meaning and memory in significantly different ways.
By applying the work of scholars in library and information science, archival studies
and museology, I argue for a more analytical discourse around convergence � one
that avoids generalisations about libraries, archives and museums and acknowledges
nuance, diversity and polyphony in the representation of history and culturalmemory.
First, the paper provides an overview of the convergence of libraries, archives and
museums in digital and physical realms, including an account of the precursors to
this re-conceptualisation of collecting organisations. Second, I deal with the ways
in which ‘memory’ operates within library, archive and museum contexts. Third,
I contrast the historiographic processes at work in libraries, archives and museums,
revealing fundamental differences in ideas about historical significance and memory
production that exist as the basis of domain-specific approaches to collections.Finally, I consider the impact that museum, library and archive convergence may
have on the shaping of narrative and memory.
This paper offers a theoretical contribution to the convergence debate; one that
seems dominated by discussion of financial efficiencies, rationalisation of services
and the ideal of universal access to information about material culture. It forms part
of a larger study addressing the epistemological status of museum, library and
archive collections and their conceptual compatibility through an examination of five
‘converged’ institutions in New South Wales, Australia. By interviewing collectionsstaff and examining the policies and organisational structures of each facility before
and after the integration process, this research provides insights into the interpreta-
tion of previously autonomous museum collections within converged organisations.
Ultimately, this broader investigation aims at strengthening the dialogue about
how physical and digital convergences can alter archival, library and especially
museum frameworks, and correspondingly, the shaping and articulation of cultural
knowledge.
Convergence and ‘memory institutions’ � a background
Within the relatively small body of literature directly related to the theme of
convergence, it is assumed that libraries, archives and museums share an essential
compatibility and purpose around the concept of memory and history. The
popularity of the term ‘memory institutions’ (see e.g. Cathro 2001; De Laurentis
2006; Dempsey 2000; Dupont 2007; Hedstrom and King 2004; Tanackovic and
Badurina 2009) attests to this. Jennifer Trant, an archives and museum informaticsconsultant, who has contributed several articles on the theme of convergence, opened
her introduction to a paper on cross-domain professional training by acknowledging
the pervasiveness of the term ‘memory institution’ in current discourse around
convergence. She suggests that ‘The memory institution . . . has captured the
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imagination of policy-makers as a powerful metaphor for the social role of libraries,
archives and museums’ (Trant 2009, 369). According to Dupont, it is understood
that libraries, archives and museums can be grouped conceptually around the theme
of memory because they all exist to ‘make a better future by helping us remember
and understand the past’ (Dupont 2007, 13).
Initially, the use of the term ‘memory institutions’ to describe libraries, archivesand museums was linked to the new possibilities opened up by the advent of the
Internet and interoperable databases that could facilitate seamless access to
collections information. Writing on memory institutions and documentation from
the perspective of Information Science, Birger Hjorland (2000) has attributed the
first usage of the term ‘memory institutions’ to Swedish information scientist
R. Hjerppe in 1994, thus highlighting the link between evolving computing
technology and the prospect of converged collections databases. From this point
of view, museums, libraries and archives are differentiated primarily by the
typological distinctions between their collections (objects, books, documents), that
seem arbitrary and redundant in an age where users can, with the aid of digital
technologies, by-pass the institutional gatekeepers and access collections directly.
This perspective has been readily adopted into the discourse around convergence
of collecting domains. For example, Tanakovic and Badurina write that the
‘fragmentation of total world memory into distinct institutionalized forms of care
for heritage is based on the nature and formal characteristics of material for whichthese different but cognate institutions assumed primary responsibility’ and,
furthermore, that this ‘artificial perspective does not benefit the end user in a
significant way’ (Tanackovic and Badurina 2009, 299). Authors such as Robert
Martin (2007, 81�2), Given and McTavish (2010) and Hedstrom and King
(2004, 12), offer a similar view, insisting that the separation of the collecting
domains was an accident of history based on now obsolete bureaucratic and
disciplinary conventions. As Lorcan Dempsey wrote in 2000, memory institutions
share a common goal in preserving and organising the intellectual record of their
societies, and they ‘recognise their users’ desire to refer to intellectual and cultural
materials flexibly and transparently, without concern for institutional or national
boundaries’ (Dempsey 2000, 3).2
The advent of online access to all types of collections, so the argument goes, has
highlighted the end-users’ desire for unmediated, direct interaction with collection
objects, their documentation, and their historical or knowledge content � pushing
the original repository of the records very much to the background. Nevertheless, it
is interesting that the collective term ‘memory institutions’ for libraries, archives andmuseums only came about relatively recently and in a digital context, as if the
commonalities that these institutions share around the concepts of collective,
national and social memory (rather than, say, their broad cultural role in facilitating
learning and research, creating an active public sphere or supporting cultural
engagement) constitute their pre-eminent value in contemporary times.
For authors such as Michelle Doucet, in an article describing the circumstances
behind the 2004 merger of Library and Archives Canada, the network synergies
offered via new technologies, though limited to the exchange of digital information,
helped accelerate debate around the potential integration of tangible collections
and physical collection spaces (Doucet 2007, 61). Doucet (2007, 65) and others
(see e.g. Martin 2007, 82; 2004, 670) also speak of users’ desire to transcend domain
Museum Management and Curatorship 415
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boundaries as a parallel force driving the move towards physical convergence. In
examples of physical convergence, such as the Albury LibraryMuseum in New South
Wales, Australia, similar ideals promising seamless access across collections were
embedded in the organisational vision. Carina Clement of the LibraryMuseum hasdescribed her institution as an integrated cultural community space, where ‘the
building was to incorporate the functions of a public library, research and technology
centre and social history museum but with limited barriers between the zones in the
building to encourage integration of spaces and experiences’ (Boaden and Clement
2009, 10).
While digital technologies and the perceived demands of collection users3 do
present a substantial and pragmatic argument for converging museums, libraries and
archives, the conceptual basis for such a shift, based upon the common grouping ofthese organisations as ‘memory institutions’, has not been investigated in the
scholarly literature. Authors such as the oft-cited Dempsey (2000) assume that these
organisations have shared interests in engaging with ‘memory’, moving directly to the
problem of how to achieve these convergences (via standardised cataloguing
processes, nomenclatures and metadata), rather than seeking to first substantiate
assumed parallels around knowledge and memory and examining why their roles in
supporting the concept of ‘memory’ have become so important in recent times. What
are the actual mechanisms through which ‘memory’ functions in relation tomuseums, libraries and archives? Is the experience of memory � individual, collective,
social, national � the same across all kinds of collecting institutions?
Libraries and memory
Libraries, archives and museums are certainly all aligned in the basic function of
accumulation and preservation of information, much (but not all) of which concerns
the past. Guided by the overwhelming imperative to provide a comprehensive publicservice (Cubitt 2006, 581), libraries in particular have concentrated their develop-
ment on producing sophisticated ways of selecting, classifying, organising and
enabling streamlined user access to collections information. Hjorland (2000)
underscores that facilitation of access is the central principle of the library context,
writing that the ‘core functions provided by librarians/information specialists are
related to such tasks as selection of documents, their indexing and classification, and
searching/retrieval of information and documents for users’ (Hjorland 2000, 35).
Similarly, Cubitt (2006) writes, ‘The library is a machine for retrieving informa-tion . . . It constructs routes of access, it guides towards results you didn’t even know
you were seeking’ (Cubitt 2006, 581).4
For the purposes of this paper, the quintessential raison d’etre of libraries, taking
into account the history of their development, is taken as being the provision of
access to documentary or text collections. While it may certainly be argued that
contemporary libraries offer an array of services that extend and even surpass this
role (such as the inclusion of ‘folksonomies’ to broaden and democratise search
terminologies,5 the trend towards various ‘edutainment’ programmes, includingexhibitions, that marry leisure and learning to attract new users,6 etc.), library
technologies for ordering their collections, and through these techniques, establishing
the context through which these collections can be accessed, remains a central tenet
of the library as an institution.
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The goal of access is facilitated in libraries by the ubiquity of standardised
nomenclatures and cataloguing procedures, outlined within widely adopted catalo-
guing standards such as the LCSH (Library of Congress Subject Headings) and the
DDC (Dewey Decimal Classification scheme used in more than 200,000 libraries
worldwide),7 with both systems formalised around the turn of the twentieth century
(Olson 2001). These elaborate cataloguing methodologies set out to organise vast
collections according to rigid hierarchical subject definitions, with the identification
of these categories being paramount to the success of the system. In principle,
therefore, libraries strive to provide broad access to entire collections via rigorous
and standardised finding aids.8
Hope Olsen, a prominent library scholar, demonstrates that library classification
(controlled vocabularies) and indexing systems not only provide access to collections
but also help establish the conceptual parameters that delineate how those collection
items are to be perceived. She writes that subject classification is ‘a sort of epistemic
cartography � mapping knowledge’ (Olson 2001, 652). Similarly, web-based
information specialist, Thomas Gruber, writes of traditional subject classifications:
‘Taxonomies limit the dimensions along which one can make distinctions, and local
choices at the leaves are constrained by global categorizations at the branches’
(Gruber 2007, 3). In other words, the ways in which libraries identify their collections
influences the direction of user inquiries and which resources will be turned up (and
grouped together) in the results of the user’s search.
Olsen convincingly argues that library practice is inherently subjective for this
reason, inscribing the ordering of collections with particular biases, even though
these have traditionally been obscured beneath a veneer of supposed objective
universality, reflecting the early twentieth century origins of library systems:
Naming information is the special business of librarians and information professionals.Applied in our role as ‘‘neutral’’ intermediaries between users and information, ourtheories, models, and descriptions are as presumptuous and controlling as scientists’construction and containment of nature. (Olson 2001, 640)
From this perspective, the concept of the modern library evolved around the
principle of connecting users with the collection resources they sought, even though
the cataloguing processes developed to facilitate this result (with their necessarily
limited naming terms and hierarchical subject headings) restricted the interpretive
possibilities of each collection item. This is an important point, as it foregrounds a
common layer of interpretation that occurs across libraries, archives and museums �albeit via diverse procedures � when items traverse the threshold from their lives as
objects in the ‘outside’ world and enter the context of a ‘collection’. Like documents
and objects in archives and museums, items in library collections earn their place by
passing certain criteria for selection and then assume a particular position in relation
to other collection items, according to definitions and thematic connections that are
attributed to them by the institution. These processes are fundamentally interpretive,
reducing the meaning-potential of individual items so that they might fit the order of
the collection as a whole. In this way, they are also elementarily historiographic,
making the first level of ‘sense’ from objects by pinning them down to a particular
scope of significance.
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However, if we are considering libraries as ‘memory institutions’, does the
subjectivity of library practice constitute a level of contextualisation comparable to
narrative creation? It would appear that, while the library organises its collection and
provides specific technologies for retrieval, and while the librarian may actively assist
a user in their search for collection items (e.g. by improving the user’s literacy in
library systems or guiding them through a reference query), it is the user who finally
decides which collection items to select, to combine with others, and then synthesises
the content for knowledge creation. What is the extent of the library’s role in the
production of meaning and ‘memory’? To what degree does the service of libraries in
facilitating access to collections qualify them as ‘memory institutions’? It may be
easier to form some conclusions about these questions once the roles of archives and
museums as ‘memory institutions’ have also been considered.
Archives and memory
Archives present another model of collecting, often viewed first and foremost in their
role of preserving information contained in unique records, rather than as overt
interpreters of content. As Mike Featherstone, editor of journal Theory, Culture &
Society, wrote in 2006 in the abstract to his article titled Archive, an archive is ‘the
place for the storage of documents and records. With the emergence of the modern
state, it became the storehouse for the material from which national memories were
constructed’ (Featherstone 2006, 591). The concept of the archive was, therefore,
conceived around the principle of preservation of documentary materials and later
evolved an official bureaucratic function, providing ‘raw’ content that could be
mined, interpreted and manipulated by scholars, governments and other external
users for, among other things, the production of historical narratives.
In contrast to museums, especially, the interpretation of collection holdings in
historical or thematic contexts by archivists is actively discouraged and even
regarded as antithetical to good archival practice. The most recent edition of
Keeping Archives (2008), a comprehensive manual of archival practice published by
the Australian Society of Archivists, contains several references to the necessity for
archives to be kept according to the principle of provenance (i.e. the order in which
they were received from the creating agency), and the need for archivists to remain at
arms length from the interpretation process (Bettington et al. 2008, 18, 356, 365,
382). The archival approach to record keeping is succinctly described in the following
paragraph from Keeping Archives:
As outlined above, archives have many potential uses and an archivist cannot knowexactly what these uses may be in the future. Rather than rearranging records in a waythat might be ‘useful’ to a particular audience, archivists preserve the original order sothat records can be understood in their original context, giving room for users tointerpret and analyse the records in a multitude of ways. (Bettington et al. 2008, 18)
The archival imperative to avoid placing layers of interpretation on collections
often precludes the use of subject or theme indexes and other finding aids common
to museum collections and libraries. The primary concerns of archives lie in retaining
the relationship between the documents and the institutional functions and activities
that gave rise to them. As such, access to the collection is organised around the
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source or creator of the record, the record type and so on.9 Similarly, due to the
governing principle of provenance (also called respect des fonds), archival records are
arranged and described in series order, rather than as individual items. Ideally, each
public user follows their own path through the order of the archive, making their own
sense of the collection without the inference of any pre-imposed understanding.10 As
such, interpretation of the meaning of archival materials often remains personal and
publically undisclosed, unless it forms part of research disseminated via a secondary
outlet that is not connected with the archive itself, such as a government publication,
scholarly research, etc. Hence, while archives exist for public use, and their content is
inherently relevant to the history and ‘memory’ of societies, the act of articulating
and disseminating those histories and memories sits outside the remit of the archive
itself.
While considering archives, it is important to acknowledge the tension that exists
between some scholars of the archival context and its practitioners. In his wide-
ranging and rigorous essay that covers the historical development of archives and
critiques mechanisms for archival information management, Terry Cook (2009)
argues that archives are not, in fact, the neutral repositories of information that they
purport to be, and that archivists actively engage in historiographic processes � even
if at times they do not recognise their own actions as such. He argues that the
impartiality of archives is a myth that grew out of a nineteenth-century rationalist
approach to the accumulation of ‘facts’ (Cook 2009, 500, 515�17), and a new
consciousness of the need to document a ‘distinctive past’ that evolved in tandem
with the idea of Europe’s accelerating scientific, technological, political and social
progress (Cook 2009, 503). These conditions, Cook argues, gave rise to a perception
(including a self-perception) of archivists as the passive, unassuming guardians of
historical data, preserving documents so that others, such as historians, could access,
interpret and create an objective historical narrative around the materials,
unencumbered by pre-imposed understandings of the collection. As Cook writes:
The need by historians, for methodological, epistemological, and gender reasons, tohave a non-problematic, pure, virginal archive, ready for the historian to discover andexploit, almost by definition required the archivist to be an invisible caretaker, a docilehandmaiden, the harem-keeper of the documentary virgins. (Cook 2009, 507)
However, Cook highlights numerous archival interventions in the processing of so-
called ‘untouched’ records, including description of collection groupings, prioritising
conservation needs, creation of catalogues, copying, implementing destruction
schedules, etc., that clearly point to the archivist as co-creator, rather than simply
the keeper, of the archive (Cook 2009, 504).11 Or, as Marlene Manoff argues in
considering Michel Foucault’s concept of the archive, the very contents and
structuring principles of not only museums but also libraries and archives,
‘establishes the possibility of what can be said’ (Manoff 2004, 18). Within this
context, the admonition of interpretive action by archivists, as sampled in the
Keeping Archives manual cited previously, points to a persisting nineteenth-century
view of archives that is at odds with the active process of meaning-making and
contextualisation that are implicit in archival practice.
Nevertheless, while archivists can certainly be viewed as interpreters of content
from this point of view, and therefore as co-authors of history and memory, it is not
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valid to assert that archival collection processes are identical to those of museums or
libraries, or that they produce the same level of contextualisation of collection
material. As Featherstone points out, the classification and storage of archives
is usually much looser than the ordering mechanisms employed by libraries
(Featherstone 2006, 593). The grouping of large quantities of documents in record
series, as opposed to the item-level description and indexing of library items, is one
example of this difference in practice. As a result, it could be said that, rather than
storing collective memory in a concrete, pre-existing form, archives house material
accumulated in original order (though not entirely ‘objectively’) that awaits writinginto some form of historical narrative by the user. Hence, archives are indeed
‘memory institutions’, but not in the same sense that libraries or museums are.
Archives provide a vast, partially organised trove of documentary sources upon
which second-tier historiographic work is yet to be done.
Museums and memory
Museums provide the third model of organisation to be considered under the broad
umbrella of the term ‘memory institutions’. Having addressed the general principles
at work in library and archival approaches to collecting, as well as some of the
implications for the production of ‘memory’, this section will consider various ideas
and definitions of how museum collections operate as a stimulus for personal
memory, or how they generate representations and consciousness of the past through
the selection and juxtaposition of collection objects.
In comparing museum practices to psychological processes that produce memory,
museologist Susan Crane shows how museums trigger the mental activity of
recollection for visitors by staging objects as signifiers of that which is absent
(Crane 2000, 2). More recently, she has written that for many people ‘museums
perform the externalized function of their own brains: it [the museum] remem-
bers . . .what is most valuable, and essential in culture and science’ (Crane 2006, 98).
The psychological process of recollection is paralleled with the mechanisms of
museum representation: just as we mentally reassemble our memories into mean-
ingful bundles in response to stimuli, museums assemble (i.e., interpret) individualobjects in various configurations to produce meaningful narratives. This process
allows museums to reify memories and knowledge that might otherwise fade if left
unwritten in this form.
Peter van Mensch employs a similar view of the museum object, citing Stransky’s
definition, where the collection item is an ‘object separated from its actual reality and
transferred to a new, museum reality in order to document the reality from which it
was separated’ (van Mensch 1990, 145). In this context, museum professionals,
especially curators, fulfil the role of historians. It is their role to select and make sense
of the evidence of the past on behalf of the visitor. Museology scholar, Gaynor
Kavanagh, directly identifies museum professionals as historians with a great
responsibility in how they represent the past. As she puts it:
Historians working in museums have possibly the most creative and complex roles of allhistory-makers. They have a wide range of evidence on which to draw, including objects,oral tradition and observed social practice . . . curators have to decide what to collectand what to let go, what to record and what to ignore. (Kavanagh 1996, 5)
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David Carr argues a similar point, describing how the museum setting juxtaposes
objects and information in engaging configurations, offering new insights that trigger
audiences to re-evaluate their worldview. For him, a museum ‘constructs narratives
that help us to locate our memories, passions, and commitments. The museum
illuminates irresistible new thoughts and stimulates revision of former thoughts’
(Carr 2006, 16). Through the interpretation of artefacts, museums provide a tangible
anchor for existing notions about the past, and present unexpected narrative insightsthat can motivate visitors to rethink ideas about history and their relationships
to it.12
In this sense, curators become arbiters of what should be considered historically
significant, charged with the responsibility of interpreting which aspects of material
evidence from the past are not only retained but also represented in meaningful ways
for contemporary and future generations. Moreover, the process of history-making
in museums is multidimensional, not only due to the immense variety of objects held
in museum collections, but also because curators employ diverse and discipline-based
methodologies for ‘reading’ these sources, founded on a variety of epistemological
approaches.13 These interpretive processes transcend the subjectivity inherent in the
initial accessioning and cataloguing of collections � a common interpretive element
across libraries, archives and museums, although in each case subject to the
particular collection policies and traditions of individual organisations.
From this small selection of important scholarship concerning the role ofmuseums in producing historical and cultural narratives, we see that museums have a
special ability to use collections to produce meanings and histories. They create
varied (and, over time, multiple) representations of a culture’s collective memory, as
well as providing a stimulus and staging ground for evoking the personal memories
of visitors. Indeed, this is a defining characteristic of the museum experience.
A glance back into the history of museums reveals their development was always
founded in the need to organise knowledge and history � the very constituents of
memory. In an essay written for the Organization for Economic Co-operation
Development (OECD), Hedstrom and King situate the development of museums in
tandem with the rise of modern science and scholarship in seventeenth century
Europe, describing how systematic collecting both accompanied and stimulated
attempts to understand and organise knowledge about nature at a time of
unprecedented access to new information about the world (Hedstrom and King
2004, 8). Paula Findlen also notes that early museums developed as a response to the
information ‘overload’ brought about by European exploration of the globe and the
corresponding introduction into European consciousness of new discoveries aboutnature, as well as foreign concepts of civilisation (Findlen 2004, 173�5). In this
unsettling period of discovery and perceived progress, accompanied by a growing
consciousness of historical time, the museum context provided a space for coherent
understanding and sense of place within the world. In this way, the initial
development of museums was intrinsically tied to the need to contextualise, and
thus make sense of, reality and temporal change.
In the contemporary context, the way in which museums organise their
collections continues to provide a cognitive model for converting new and dissociated
information into meaningful knowledge and cultural memory (Carr 2006, 13;
Hetherington 2006, 600�2). While acknowledging the diversity that exists among
museums, Kevin Hetherington points to the provision of a singular, coherent
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narrative space as a central tenet of these institutions. He writes that the modern
museum:
seeks to provide modern society with a fabricated Erfahrung [experience]. It seeksthrough its display regimes, their narratives and ordering logics to provide people with asense that they are living in a world where our uncertain and complex set of experiencesmake sense. (Hetherington 2006, 600)
This idea not only emphasises the importance of museums as a counter-balance to
the potentially destabilising effects of the ‘modern experience’, but also points to the
ethical responsibility to culture inherent in this role. Bringing these issues into
contemporary focus, Chung, Wilkening, and Johnstone (2008) predict that the
permeation of digital content into everyday life is creating a similar ‘overload’ that
will open up new opportunities for museums to stand out not only as providers of
credible, authoritative and verifiable information, but also to demonstrate mechan-
isms by which the overabundance of available sources can be navigated and arranged
around significant themes and issues of community interest, creating ‘oases of the
real in an increasingly virtual world’ (Chung, Wilkening, and Johnstone 2008, 19).
Essentially, these processes of arrangement and sense-making are particular
narrative techniques that define the way in which museums communicate ideas
through the use of objects. A museum collection exists not as an end in itself, but
rather as the raw material that curators (and other museum professionals) assemble
and juxtapose via specific museal practices in order for a variety of ideas to be made
manifest. Ghislaine Lawrence, writing in Susan Pearce’s influential book Objects of
Knowledge, makes a similar observation, preferring to class museums as a form of
media in the sense that the work of museums is primarily the use of artefacts and
other ‘devices’ to create meanings for audiences (Lawrence 1990, 103). In this
process, museums are not about unmediated open access to collections. As Crane
suggests, the ‘institutional nature of the museum has encouraged the construction of
narratives that inhibit random access in favour of orderly, informative meaning-
formation’ (Crane 2000, 4).
From this point of view, apart from the technical functions of cataloguing,
describing and preserving collections (which, of course, embody their own set of
subjectivities), the distinctive value of museums is their ability to contextualise
collection objects within broader thematic and narrative groupings � enabling
visitors to engage with more complex ideas about history and ‘memory’. It is through
this curatorial interface that most in-person visitors interact with museum collec-
tions. It is also this interpretive museal framework that is most in danger of being
obscured or circumvented when individual object records are accessed directly at
item level, as often occurs when visitors use digital museum collection databases. The
challenge for museums with digital collection access will be to maintain the
interpretive scaffolding that renders basic collection records meaningful, thereby
distinguishing themselves from libraries and archives, which generally offer electronic
records without additional superimposed layers of context. Within converged
collection environments, whether physical or digital, these basic philosophical
differences between museums, libraries and archives around provision of access to
collection information are yet to be convincingly resolved. The question also remains
as to whether, for the sake of differentiation and variety, they should be.
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Re-plotting ‘memory’ through convergence
So far, this paper has considered the comparative approaches and collection practices
of libraries, archives and museums in relation to the production of historical
knowledge, or ‘memory’, in a general sense. Although the cataloguing and
descriptive methodologies of libraries and archives have been recognised as a
technology for framing users’ understanding of collections, and these processes are
commeasurable with cataloguing procedures and collection management in mu-
seums, it is problematic to equate them with the interpretive curatorial interventions
applied to museum collections.14 As such, it could be said that although museums,
libraries and archives proceed along the path of memory together a certain way, only
museums continue through additional steps to actively and self-consciously author
historical narratives through their objects.
From this point of view, however, it is still possible to assert that museums,
libraries and archives can be grouped together as ‘memory institutions’, as they share
similar approaches to collection management and the basic processes of cataloguing,
naming and description of collections that Terry Cook has validly identified as
fundamentally historiographic. Interestingly, a deeper examination of these appar-
ently common approaches reveals that, although superficially compatible, their
specific articulation within individual libraries, archives and museums may produce a
diverse array of narrative understandings of collections, and that such differences
should be taken into account in the context of potential convergence of these
domains.
Cultural theorist Mieke Bal’s work concerning the defining practices of collecting
can be used to help understand the significance of such differences. Drawing on a
theatrical analogy to describe the structure of museum representation, her ideas can
be extrapolated to archives and libraries in their primary role in gathering together
and documenting collections. Bal (2004) envisions the basic practice of collecting as a
form of narrative production, where the narrator (in this case the librarian, archivist
or curator) communicates a story by giving an account of a series of events, or plot,
using actors (the collection objects). In a broad sense, the holdings of libraries,
archives and museums all evidently conform to Bal’s narrative definition of a
collection, in that each of these institutions focus the acquisition of collection items
within particular parameters of selection, classification and documentation, in order
to present an intelligible whole. However, there are a number of contingencies that
differentiate the information that can be gleaned from these different collection
types, primarily because their plotting strategies are different. In other words, to
borrow the phrasing of another scholar, each collecting domain can be seen as a
particular ‘category of experience’ (Findlen 2004); a framework for perception,
corresponding to the specific ways in which each institution orders and assembles
information resources.
We may, for example, consider the particular collection management and
description standards of each collecting domain as plotting devices, where the
objects are arranged to communicate different stories (e.g. respect des fonds, or
provenance, as the organising principle in archives, hierarchical subject groupings via
the LCSH or DDC in libraries, or thematic, typological or taxonomical sets in
certain museums). When data are channelled into various information clusters
according to these ordering principles, it follows that the derivative knowledge or
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historical narrative will also be differentiated and plural. This diversity holds the
potential for multifaceted classifications and interpretations of meaning around even
similar collection holdings, simply as a result of their position within one type of
collecting institution or another. The variety of models for organising and describing
objects across the collecting sectors therefore creates polyphony around what
constitutes historical awareness, collective and individual memory and the articula-
tion of culture.Second, in the case of museum objects, Bal reminds us that the legibility of
the narrative hinges on the use of normative codes for meaning-making that both the
narrator and the audience can understand (Bal 2004). In museums, for example, the
effective delivery of the narrative requires both the curator and the visitor to be
literate in museum communication methods, accompanied by the expectation of a
particular collection experience. In order to satisfy these preconditions, there is value
in conforming to the norms and devices of information arrangement that are
characteristic of the museum context. Similarly, it can be inferred that archives and
libraries are also only effective if their users can navigate their way through the
particular methods used by each institutional type to present the content of their
collections.
Several issues arise here, especially when considering the physical convergence of
collection domains from this point of view. First, if the motivations of the collector
are the centre or ‘motor’ of the narratives produced through the collection objects(Bal 2004), it follows that if the identity of the narrator shifts from a single entity to a
converged amalgamation of two or more, so too must the motivations behind the
collection, thereby inevitably altering the shape of its narratives in some way. In cases
of physical convergence, we may reasonably ask how changing a collection rationale
through the combination of institutions, including the development of a new
mission, strategic plan, organisational structure, collection policies or the introduc-
tion of cross-disciplinary methodologies for the documentation and presentation of
objects, may effect the ‘re-plotting’ of existing collections to produce new meanings.
When this occurs, do we diminish the potential for collections to deliver a variety
of important cultural narratives in favour of a single or more homogenous
perspective? Furthermore, as part of the utopian ideal of creating universal access
to digital collection resources from across the domains, does the need for
standardised metadata obscure the significance of particular naming conventions
of individual institutions, and therefore the imprint of institutional identity and the
overall shape of each collection in favour of accessing individual, isolated objects?
And, in the case of museums, where does digital convergence leave room for the kindof additional interpretative, historiographic interface that produces coherent
narratives and meaning around groups of collection objects?
Bal’s ideas regarding the plotting strategies distinctive to collectors, and the
different narratives that these strategies evoke, resonate with questions of ‘memory’
and history relating to libraries, archives and museums as collecting institutions.
From this perspective, not only each domain, but also an each individual
organisation imparts a certain ‘identity’ to its collection via its practices of
representation � some limited to the ways in which collections are selected and
organised, others enhancing their interpretive footprint through active approaches to
representing collections through specific narrative contexts. Each organisation in this
rich constellation offers a potentially different snapshot of ‘memory’ and history,
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sometimes through a variety of entry points into the collection. The danger in the
current usage of the term ‘memory institutions’ � in concert with discussions about
digital convergence, or in referencing the so-called obsolete distinctions between
libraries, archives and museums � is that the variety of avenues into memory andhistory provided by these organisations may be overlooked.
Correspondingly, the diverse potential for interactions with collections in
particular ‘memory’ contexts may be diminished. Moreover, there is the basic
conceptual premise, as examined in this paper, that each domain in its approach to
collections offers a particular contribution to the production of memory, from the
implicit subjectivity of library and archival collection practices, to the more explicit
curatorial interventions applied by museums to overtly develop narrative content by
selective use of collection resources. Each of these approaches addresses differentaspects of the production of memory, doing so to quite different extents. In the
context of possible convergence of the domains is it therefore useful, or indeed
responsible, to speak of libraries, archives and museums as ‘memory institutions’ in a
single breath, without acknowledging the ways in which these important distinctions
are actualised?
Conclusion
In order to make the convergence of collection domains appear uncomplicated and
perhaps more palatable, the term ‘memory institutions’ has been applied to classifylibraries, archives and museums together, and thereby create the semblance of
compatibility across their activities. While convenient, this choice of terminology
obscures fundamental differences in the ways in which libraries, archives and
museums acquire, record and interpret their collections. In particular, the important
sense-making function of museum narrative techniques, which have evolved as a
defining characteristic of the museum experience and offer an interpretive tier that
extends beyond the subjectivity of archival and library collection practices, are not
differentiated within the generic usage of this term.Though sometimes now seen as redundant, the particular collection manage-
ment, documentation and interpretive traditions of libraries, archives and museums
have the potential to bring forth an elaborate and nuanced environment for the
creation of historical consciousness and cultural knowledge, with each institution
imparting certain characteristics to the information presented to the end-user, and
thus engaging with concepts of knowledge and ‘memory’ to various degrees. The pre-
supposition of compatibility between museums, libraries and archives, as implied
within the ‘memory institution’ concept, is problematic because it is an over-simplification. A comparative delineation of the epistemological frameworks relative
to each field, and the ways in which these approaches package collection
information, channel linkages across collections, and structure the user experience
is a necessary precondition to genuine debate about convergence and its long-term
implications for collections of culturally significant materials.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Associate Professor Jennifer Barrett of the University ofSydney for her insightful critique of the text and invaluable editorial advice.
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Notes
1. In Australia, the most widely cited example is the Albury LibraryMuseum (Albury,NSW). Others include the Western Plains Cultural Centre (Dubbo, NSW), ParramattaHeritage Centre (Sydney) and the Hurstville Library Museum Gallery (Sydney). PukeAriki, an institution in New Plymouth (New Zealand) has often been referred to inAustralia as a prototype of full convergence.
2. Other authors who have recently used the term ‘memory institution’ to refer generically tolibraries, archives and museums include Kallinikos, Aaltonen, and Marton (2010). In theirpaper titled A theory of digital objects, these authors describe digital objects � anyinformation item including text, music, video, image, etc. � as ‘borderless’ and distributed,only connecting transiently when assembled for a particular purpose (Kallinikos,Aaltonen, and Marton 2010, 4). Within this notion of the digital, as opposed to physicalcultural object, the item becomes liberated from its original setting, again supporting theidea that the institutional repository of an online cultural resource is not important indigital space.
3. Interestingly, while many of the authors cited above point to digital convergence as aresponse to user demand for more seamless cross-domain collection searches, I have notcome across any user evaluation research that specifically articulates such concerns amongusers.
4. See also Sharon Cosentino, who writes in Public Libraries journal that ‘connecting userswith information is at the very heart of the library profession’ (Cosentino 2008, 42).
5. The term ‘Folksonomy’, coined in 2004 by information architect Thomas Vander Wal,denotes the practice of online users bookmarking, labelling or ‘tagging’ content accordingto their own keywords (Cosentino 2008; Gruber 2007). This user-generated metadataprovides an alternative vocabulary to established search terms (such as those set out bylibrary cataloguing systems), where terminology may not be in tune with current languageusage or may omit contemporary subjects of interest. According to Gruber, the benefit offolksonomies lies in their potential to reveal popular themes of interest among users ofonline content (such as images, websites, audio-visual material, etc.) and patterns in theterminologies attributed to this content (Gruber 2007, 3).
6. For a detailed analysis and critique of edutainment-based programmes in libraries seeDilevko and Gottlieb (2004, Ch. 1, 2).
7. Figure obtained from the website of the OCLC (Online Computer Library Centre),located in Dublin, Ohio. The OCLC is the administrator of the Dewey system.
8. Sean Cubitt, writing on the library concept and the practices of contemporary libraries,indicates that the penultimate goal of standardised library databases is universal access, or‘global library services forming a single agglomerate’ (Cubitt 2006, 582), now technicallyconceivable via the possibility of integrated digital networks. It is interesting to note thatthis vision, apparently emanating from the library domain, has become a driver for digitalconvergence of libraries with archives and museums as well.
9. It is important to acknowledge here that institutional archives work within a legislativeframework in which certain collections must be preserved for a minimum period, andwhere records are seen as a potential source of evidence of the operations of anorganisation. In this context, the administrative role of institutional archives differs fromthat of collecting archives, which primarily focus on the accumulation of originaldocumentary material for posterity (although many archives serve as an amalgamationof both).
10. Another indication that the extrapolation of meaning is not seen as one of the roles ofarchivists is presented in the content of the Archives of Australia website (2010), which,for example, does not cite interpretation of collections among the six core areas oftheoretical and applied knowledge necessary for archival practice.
11. Cook (2009) highlights the absurdity of the notion of the objective, neutral archive byciting the statistic that only about 1�5 per cent of the available documentation from majorinstitutions (and far less from private citizens) is actually preserved (504). This fact in itselfis evidence that records pass through a rigorous process of selection and appraisal toqualify for archival preservation � and these decisions fall to archivists. Furthermore, healso notes that the systematised arrangement of archive records according to their
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institutional origin/creator produces a simulation of order that may not have existed inoperational reality (528). Marlene Manoff explores similar territory in her account ofJacques Derrida’s Archive Fever (1995), noting that processes of ‘archivization’ activelyshape the historical record, rather than merely preserving an account of it (Manoff2004, 12).
12. Writing about the function of museum objects as signs, Edwina Taborsky (1990) reinforcesthe idea that the construction of historical consciousness in museums is not a passive one-way process; audiences bring their own interpretive action to the equation, creating adialogue where objects function as the locus of the meaning-exchange between museumsand their visitors.
13. See, for example, the various methodologies for artefact study outlined in ThomasSchlereth’s Material Culture Studies in America (1982) and Susan Pearce’s InterpretingObjects and Collections (1994).
14. Ray Lester, writing in 2001 on the possibility of convergence between museums andlibraries, makes a similar differentiation between the way in which the two institutionaltypes treat their collections. He writes: ‘A key distinction between museums and librarieshas been that, generally, museums have seen their role as providing such context � or‘‘interpretation’’ � ahead of the event; libraries have for the most part been concerned notto make such value judgements’ (Lester 2001, 187). He believes that museums see theiressential role as interpreters of collections, whereas librarians do not � even though theirpractices do contextualise their collections to a certain extent, as discussed earlier inthis paper.
Notes on contributor
Helena Robinson is a practicing curator and researcher with interests spanning art and socialhistory collections, as well as the history and theory of museums. She has previously publishedresearch examining multidisciplinary approaches to the documentation of museum objectsand the development of digital collection databases. She is currently a PhD candidate with theDepartment of Museum Studies at the University of Sydney.
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