The documentation of museum collections has traditionally focused on the creation of comprehensive databases of structured text records, each detailing the salient characteristics of a particular object, specimen or work of art. Designed and implemented with collections management functions in mind, these databases comprehensively record consistent data about museum collections. Standards development efforts, such as those of the International Council of Museums, Committee on Documentation have modeled the structure of such databases, defined minimum database fields structure and recommended terminology to be used. Integration efforts have focused on developing systems which will support a broad range of museum functions, from registration, to curatorial activities, to conservation or photographic services.
The ability to capture and store information in formats other than structured text provides new opportunities for the documentation and interpretation of works in museum collections. New kinds of information can be recorded, stored and communicated. Multimedia databases -- defined for the purposes of this report as databases which store two or more different types of information -- enable the recording of structured text, unstructured text, still images, moving images and sound. All of these data types can be integrated to form a comprehensive archive which offers a more robust picture of the context and meaning embodied in an artifact, held in a collection and interpreted by an institution.
Initial efforts to exploit the interpretive potential of multi-media in museums focused on the creation of single-purpose interpretive or educational projects. These may have taken the form of an in-gallery kiosk (offering orientation to an institution or exhibition) or a publication (distributed on videodisc or CD-ROM). The models for these projects came from the world of publications, and their goals reflected those of gallery guides or exhibition catalogues. These first forays into interpretive multi media exploited the interactive potential of multimedia to offer a personal view of often complex and "multi-layered" subjects.
These prototypes and first generation systems produced, almost as a by-product, collections of digital data in forms other than text. The potential to reuse multi-media content (such as digital images) created for one purpose in another project, however, has fostered the development of institutional multi-media databases. These storehouses of text, structured-text, sound, and still and moving image information form an impressive information resource. The construction of institutional multi-media archives has begun to play a significant role in the documentation strategies of many museums.
Multimedia is an opportunity for museums. It offers a paradigm for capturing and preserving the multi-faceted information embodied in the objects of our culture. It also offers new capabilities for structuring and communicating knowledge of our collections.
By surrounding objects with a gloss that includes description, representation, interpretation, derivation and appreciation, we can document and communicate the cultural significance of artifacts. Meaning is preserved as well as physical form. A multi-media database can function as an institution's collective memory.
Museum multimedia databases are becoming vast storehouses of digital information about the world's cultures, which have the potential to play a significant role in the new information age. As libraries are being converted into digital form and teaching takes place on the networks rather than in classrooms, learning moves from being directed to being exploratory. Museum multimedia databases which offer quality content and depth of meaning are prime resources for network research. By making collections available in digital form, both in-house and through communications networks, museums have a tremendous opportunity to meet their educational mandate [Get reference to ICOM museum definition]
Multimedia museum archives become an institutional knowledge-base, providing the raw-materials for the creation of new intellectual property. Portions of the database can form the core of multimedia products which structure the vast amount of information available on a subject, offering layers of interpretation and meaning. Linked together over networks, museum multimedia databases could become a valuable cultural resource. The continent of multimedia information is just now forming in networked information space. Explorers are identifying the natural features of this new landscape. We are learning to tell the mountains from the rivers, the fixed points from the pathways. What is missing are maps. These maps through multimedia cultural information may become the knowledge of the future. Those who can offer meaning through structuring and interpreting complex information will provide the subject-oriented, specialized guides to these new spaces. Museums are ideally suited to play this role.
J. Trant
Chair, ICOM/CIDOC Multimedia Working Group
September, 1995
Acknowledgements Introduction