Issues and Expectations for Digital Archives in Museums of History: A View from a Japanese Museum

Abstract

Digital archiving systems promise to advance the ability of museums to preserve and utilize information about historical and cultural materials. Museums have a large number of materials that require preservation from future degradations for a long period as long as possible. On the other hand, it is common, and important to use these materials for a variety of purposes, i.e., exhibitions, investigations, researches, education, and so on. In this article, several issues and expectations for digital archiving systems used in museums of history are discussed.In museums of history, digital archives enable more flexible exhibitions that satisfy visitors' needs, more deeper investigation and research, and a more convenient means of managing materials in comparison with conventional archiving systems. They also promise to increase accessibility to materials at lower cost. At the same time, digital archiving systems must work alongside and with conventional ones. The author hopes that this article will help with the effort to build better digital archiving systems.