The Next Level: Automating the Collection Records at the Peabody Museum

The Next Level Automating the Collection Records at the Peabody Museum

The first truly successful efforts to automate museum collection records took place in the late 1980s. The goal then was to get the basic paper records (the catalogue cards) into electronic form. This was soon followed by very primitive efforts to have an associated image of the object linked to the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Collections (Walnut Creek, Calif.) Vol. 10; no. 4; pp. 367 - 380
Main Authors: Schafer, David K. DeBono, LeBlanc, Steven A.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Sage Publications, Inc 01-12-2014
Subjects:
Collections and collecting
Electronic records
Exhibitions
United States
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Summary:The first truly successful efforts to automate museum collection records took place in the late 1980s. The goal then was to get the basic paper records (the catalogue cards) into electronic form. This was soon followed by very primitive efforts to have an associated image of the object linked to the computer record. Today, about 25 years later, we can initially feel that “we have done that.” Most museums have some form of automated records. These are extremely useful and it is hard to imagine how we ever functioned with just paper. Yet, technological advances have been so rapid that most museums are still far behind what is potentially well within our grasp. Our goal in this article is to show what can be accomplished, how easily it can be realized, and the benefits of reaching the Next Level. We focus on the Peabody Museum both because we know it well, but also because the Peabody is one of the oldest museums in the country, so we probably have all the problems and issues one is likely to ever encounter (we have records written with quill pens!). Moreover, the collections are large. We have 600,000 catalog records representing six million items and over 400,000 historic photographs, along with vast quantities of archival material. Thus, we have had to find solutions that scale up, and can be done quickly and cheaply enough to make meaningful headway on our collections.
ISSN:1550-1906
DOI:10.1177/155019061401000402