Umeå University's logo

umu.sePublications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Katalogen – nyckeln till museernas kunskap?: Om dokumentation och kunskapskultur i museer
Umeå University, Faculty of Arts, Department of culture and media studies.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-5836-9033
2013 (Swedish)Doctoral thesis, monograph (Other academic)Alternative title
Catalogues – a Mode of Knowledge Display? : Knowledge Management and Knowledge Culture inMuseums (English)
Abstract [en]

In the 1990s, the MLA sector – archives, libraries, museums – was defined as a comprehensive sector. One of the reasons for this was the belief that the digitizing of institutional collections and catalogues would provide a seamless access to the cultural heritage for the general public. No one would any longer need to know in which institution a certain object was kept; everything would be available on the Internet.

The questions in this dissertation depart from the expectations in the late 1900s aimed at the available systems in the MLA sector for the management and storage of information and at knowledge maintained in such systems. My point of departure is the idea that access to collections in the MLA sector – real or digital – is made possible through the catalogues. It is in the catalogues that the sector orders data and preserves knowledge collected about the objects. My most important conclusions deal with the management and production of knowledge in the sector. The data systems generally used in the MLA sector lack the indulgence needed to accommodate inherent variability of information. Systems must be based on exact sorting, uniform terminology and classification without deviations in spelling or interpretation.

Furthermore, international projects and systems presuppose distinct translations between national terminologies and international classification systems to work for information retrievals.

This is not the case with the museum systems here investigated, in opposition to, primarily, the libraries. The museum systems are characterised as distinctive instead of following uniformity principles and national or international taxonomies.

An important conclusion about knowledge processing and knowledge production in the MLA sector is that the value of compiling digitalised data from many museums is limited. It is not possible to realize the political goal other than at a superficial level.

The conclusions in a comparison between the three professional groups are that in the beginning of the 21th century an extensive part of the antiquarians confirm a thought style, according to Ludwik Fleck, which has another direction than that of archivists and librarians. Throughout the 20th century or in the last decades of the 20th century the two latter groups professionalised their roles both through changes in education and through new professional requirements which led to positions and attitudes in their work other than what happened in the museum sector. Museums are mainly research institutions with members of staff who in many respects lack a focus on increased accessibility of collections. Challenges formulated for museums of cultural history by the cultural politics of the 1970s have not been answered with great flexibility.

The investigation in this dissertation demonstrates that archives, libraries and museums in many respects continue to pursue activities according to a thought style which was formed during the first half of the 20th century. Their positions in society, their administrational practice and expectations from the general public constitute stabilising and preserving factors. The MLA sector is not as comprehensive as the policy makers want to believe.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Umeå: Umeå universitet , 2013. , p. 264
Series
Papers in museology, ISSN 1103-0100 ; 8
Keywords [en]
Museums, Archives, Libraries, MLA sector, GLAM, collections management, classification
National Category
Other Humanities not elsewhere specified
Research subject
museology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-80093ISBN: 978-91-7459-722-6 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-80093DiVA, id: diva2:646500
Public defence
2013-10-01, Humanisthuset, sal F, Umeå universitet, Umeå, 13:15 (Swedish)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2013-09-10 Created: 2013-09-09 Last updated: 2021-11-23Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

Katalogen - nyckeln till museernas kunskap?(1570 kB)4104 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 1570 kBChecksum SHA-512
0f50bbb786f749def6fa3a5302fe981ffc7115728983d6d5e9756311955939f3096f610c0924b4645eb1df5d4198082381fe0caf897a5ded359d689eefe6d83c
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Authority records

Wittgren, Bengt

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Wittgren, Bengt
By organisation
Department of culture and media studies
Other Humanities not elsewhere specified

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 4112 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

isbn
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

isbn
urn-nbn
Total: 5978 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf