Conference paper
A CUSTODIAN’S CHALLENGE: A MUSEUM DOCUMENTATION STANDARD FOR ALL? EXPERIENCE FROM HERITAGE CONSERVATION CENTRE (HCC), SINGAPORE
Faith Teh Eng Eng
; Centar za očuvanje naslijeđa, Nacionalni odbor za očuvanje naslijeđa, Singapur
Abstract
The challenges in documenting museums’ collections are a reality in the absence of agreed standard in capturing useful information. As a collection custodian to artefacts which ranges from modern art to historical and folk antiquities, any attempt to establish a documentation standard catering to all needs of the museums is difÞ cult. A lack of terminology controls and thesauri suitable for our Asian collections is yet another problem we face. Historically, before the establishment of the Collections Unit in 1991 and subsequently the HCC in 1998, documentation of collections was done in various ways. Many records were incomplete with few or no information because of an absence of syntactical discipline in the entire documentation process. Even with the most advanced computerised
system, it is highly possible that the system could yield incomplete results during a search because of a relaxed terminology and syntax control. Searching through manual records is even near impossible because of the volume of our collections. The active public programmes and various developmental projects of our National Museums call for a need to solve the problem. We not only have
to ensure that internal problems hindering effective access to collections is solved, we have to look into facilitating public’s access to the information and knowledge stored in the museums. The Integrated Museum Collections Management System (IMCMS) project embarked by HCC and the National Museums in 2004 provided a good platform to solve our problems. This presentation aims to share the difÞ culties that we encounter in developing a documentation standard for all our collections in a single database
and the compromise reached in several negotiations processes. Considerations on the impact of the museum-public relationship were given to ensure greater access to the collections.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
77506
URI
Publication date:
1.6.2007.
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