1. Cataloguing Museum Collections
History, Trends, and Issues
JHU Museum Studies Spring 2010

2. Week 2: Definitions
Collection Cataloguing-the systematic process of recording information about an object including its physical characteristics, its history, and its care and management

3. Descriptive Cataloguing
Answers the questions posed by the interrogative pronouns (5 Ws and H)
A subset of this information is found on collections labels that accompany objects in gallery space.

4. What?
Often referred to as Object Naming
Titles
Classification hierarchies
Object names
Descriptions

5. Who?
Makers
People or entities involved in the history of the object
Subjects

6. Where?
Geographic place names
Geolocations
Some overlap with When? cluster
Culture
Period
Style

7. When?
Records information about important events in the history of an object
Creation date
Historical dates

8. Why?
Most often used to describe functional objects and objects of everyday life
Can be linked to a nominclature

9. How?
Method of creation (medium, technique)
Materials may be drawn from a controlled vocabulary

10. Administrative Cataloguing
Museums record a good deal of information to support the care and stewardship of the objects in its collection.
Collecting history
Object location and movement
Appraisals and valuations
Use of object information

11. Rights Cataloguing
As technology has lowered the barriers for sharing information about museum collections, it has become more important to track information related to the intellectual property rights associated with an object
Copyright of work
Copyright of surrogates
Museum license to use work, often non-exclusive
Licenses with end users

12. Readings
Buck, R. and Gilmore, J., eds. (1998).The New Museum Registration Methods(chapter on Docmentation, pp. 17-40). Washington, DC: American Association of Museums. [eReserves]
Heritage Health Index (2005).A Public Trust at Risk: The Heritage Health Index Report on the State of America's Collections (pp. 79-83). Washington, DC: Heritage Preservation. [eReserves]
Baca, M. (2008).Introduction to Metadata, version 3.0. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute,http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/intrometadata/

13. Assignment
Add three terms and their definitions to the course glossary. The glossary can be found in the Wiki section of Sakai. You will see that the glossary has been seeded with some terms that we will be using. You can either define one of these terms or add terms of your own. Definitions should be in your own words. Feel free to illustrate the definitions with examples. Sign your entries with your initials. You will be refining these terms over the course of the semester as your understanding of cataloguing evolves.

14. Discussion
First half of the week: Consider and describe ways or areas in which cataloguing and/or structured information management are important in museums. Are there ways in which technology has made cataloguing less important or necessary?
Second half of the week: Respond to something you found interesting in this weeks assigned readings.