The current surge in international and national enthusiasm for activities promoting cultural properties is an exciting opportunity for professionals dealing with these materials; rarely before has such support been available, and combined with present-day technology the possibilities seem vast. There is still, however, a need to define the real steps that must be taken in order to provide optimum access to museum collections. One set of important issues in the computerization and modernization of museums would be the needs of the professional staff for the internal workings of the museum. The amount of academic and legal record-keeping associated with museum collections is significant, and tools have been developed which can assist in making it managable; there are computer programs for membership, gift shops inventories, and daily attendance, too. These tools function as the essential gears and cogs of museum automation, however, and are not as often considered for funding as the flashing lights, bells, and whistles of other aspects of the business (such as exhibitions or education programs).
In dealing with artifacts or specimens, museum professionals process information about combinations of objects and activities which are unique to their particular kind of institution. Included in the range of this data are object descriptions, accessions into collections, loans, conservation records, and often biographical and bibliographic information. The phrase "museum informatics" describes methods of dealing with these sets of information. "Collections management" is a term which can be applied to the activities surrounding not only the physical objects held by a museum, but also any and all information related to those objects. Computerization can make complex tasks easier to manage, so museums are also turning to computers for assistance in their collections management efforts.
One major area om which Western museums have begun to utilize computers to manage museum-specific information is in the creation of databases for day-to-day use in the place of written registers or card catalogues. Museum collections vary in size from a handful of objects to millions of objects, and managing large quanitities of data is a task which is difficult or impossible to accomplish armed with only paper and pencils. The physical volume of space occupied by a large paper catalogue must be considered as well, as opposed to the volume occupied by data stored in electronic form.
Computer databases, incorporated into collections management systems, provide easy access (although security is still possible through the use of passwords, etc.) to information, and make it easy to keep information current. They are very valuable tools in museum work; how much accurate information they contain is almost the only theoretical limit to their usefulness. In terms of practicality, of course, the actual programmed resources and stylistic differences make some programs good investments and others expensive lessons.
Here are some examples of the kinds of information a museum uses:
| * who gave it to the museum? | * who is the legal owner? | |
| * when was it received? | * how can they be contacted? | |
| * who has owned it before? | * when was it made? | |
| * has it ever been written about? | * what is its identification number or code? | |
| * where is it stored/displayed? | * are there photographs of it? | |
| * how should it be stored or packed? | * what is its importance? | |
| * when does its location change? | * what is its size? | |
| * has it ever been repaired or cleaned? | * who has repaired or cleaned it? | |
| * how was it repaired or cleaned? | * what is its name? | |
| *what is its description? | * what does it signify? | |
| * what is it made of? | * how is it used? | |
| * is it a part of, or related to, another object or set of objects? | * what is its value? | |
| * who determined these facts, and when? |
With this kind of information registrars, curators, and collections managers can do their jobs: exhibits can be held, catalogues and monographs produced, objects can be properly cared for and located when they are needed. Accountants can calculate insurance figures; exhibit designers can build mounts, create wall labels, and paint walls; researchers and the public can learn when the information is there; without it none of this happens. If the right people cannot find or access the information, things don't happen.
In a database, the smallest unit is of the data itself (or "datum"); in a museum database it is usually a term, date, or number (it can also be image information, but that is another issue to be discussed at another time). In a database, a field is a (meta)data item (see below for an explanation of metadata) of some type - numeric, character, date, monetary, etc. - that contains one or more terms or datum. A table contains records made up of fields. There are "flat-file" databases, "relational" databases, and "object-oriented" databases. A flat-file database is composed of tables. A relational database places tables into files, which can then interact to create new and different records. An object-oriented database handles data or bunches of data as "objects" with certain characteristic attributes and useful for specific operations. Museum information (data), for example the answers to the questions listed above, is usually entered into a database as terms in various fields.
The problem of finding information that has been entered into a database requires certain tools; the process of using these tools is called "searching". Computers use algorithms to recognize data terms. An "exhaustive search" of a database starts at the begining and checks a term (the "search term") against every term in the database. A "binary search" algorithm compares a search term to the term at the middle of the database and determines if the search term should be found before or after that point - reducing the area to search by one half. This kind of algorithmic search dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes to complete a search.
There are two ways that databases can store and recognize database terms: as strings of characters and as coded terms - after all, every piece of information entered into a computer is coded as bits, etc. The most common type of data search is a string search, where the computer looks for characters in a row in the text. If terms are coded and the database is relational, however, it can store records about where the term has been used and this makes searches more efficient.
Key points to remember when making a database are: 1) the idea is for someone who doesn't know how you described some object to be able to find it; 2) unless you are going to display every word (term) you have used in your database, outsiders will have no clue what kind of words you used; 3) searches that end with zero results are very frustrating - unless you have a database capable of handling related terms (eg., suggesting alternative search terms), don't fill your database with words you didn't use to describe objects (even if they are well-known, scientifically related or important terms).