Museums and the computer: An appraisal of new potentials

Abstract

custodians than communicators is, I believe, the obvious explanation for their seeming indifference to the rigors and evident potentialities of data processing. But now, at long last, the computer has entered the house of the Muse and-like the man who came to dinner-the guest is here to stay. It would behoove the host to know something about his visitor's care and feeding, and prepare himself for those changes in household that the newcomer's arrival are sure to bring. One might well wonder how the computer fits into the general scheme of the art museum which, for all intents and purposes, seems to have been getting on so admirably without one. The truth is that the outward air of well-being is not symptomatic of the state of the archives within. Museums, like other institutions, have succumbed to the propensity of our society to amass data in all its forms: as public collections continue to grow at an increasing rate, the stores of information that pertain to these holdings have burgeoned beyond control. The communication circuits of these institutions are overloaded to the point where a failure in critical areas of their activity is seriously threatened. Art museums have long since despaired of keeping abreast of the demands made of them for information by the scholarly community or the general public, and are fast approaching an impasse in their ability to serve even their own internal needs. The registrar of one of our major institutions notes with alarm that "millions of objects are scattered among thousands of museums; the bulk of this material is uncatalogued" while "even more is unpublished . . . . If the situation is barely tolerable for those working in standard disciplines and familiar with the relevant collections, it is infinitely worse for those whose studies cut across traditional lines." More in behest of necessity than out of a spirit of adventure, museologists in increasing numbers are turning to the computer, confident that machine techniques will point the way to the discovery of new values inherent in their collections, which outmoded methods of record-keeping have merely obscured. The first tangible explorations into computer applications in museum work began some three years ago when, unbeknownst to each other, a number of projects of related scope were initiated almost simultaneously in different parts of the world. Each of these projects had as its goal the assembly of a computerized catalog, or "data bank," covering either a distinct class of museum information to be found within a given