Saturday, July 23, 2011

Libraries, museums and archives

I now need to think/talk about the difference between these three information outlets, using the following prompts:

What information is each dealing with?
Libraries predominantly print texts, though other things too; Museums predominantly 3D objects, though they "theoretically have no limit"; Archives predominantly records. There are objects which could be found in all three, but usually the purpose of your search would take you to one in particular.

How different is it?
These types of information are different in that the metatdata they have varies - they cannot necessarily be entered into the system the same way. Where print resources generally have things such as an author, title and year of publication to describe them, items in a museum or archive generally have less concrete descriptors.

How does it change what information we might want to organise and retrieve?
As stated above, there is some crossover between objects found in each institution, but usually you would go to the one which will primarily deal with the type of information you are after, for example if you are looking for family history, you are more likely to go to an archive than a library. Whilst libraries can still have information on family history, they are likely to allow archives to concentrate on organising records. This makes it easier for the cataloguers/archivers, as well as for the consumers.

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