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Metadata in Museums

Metadata in a museum context refers to the information that trained cultural documentation specialists, such as archivists, librarians, museum registrars and curators, create to index, structure, describe, identify, or otherwise specify works of art, architecture, cultural objects and their images. Descriptive metadata are most commonly used in museum contexts for object identification and resource recovery purposes.

Museum Metadata Usage

Metadata are developed and applied within collecting institutions and museums in order to:
 * To facilitate resource discovery and execute search queries.
 * Create digital archives that store information relating to various aspects of museum collections and cultural objects, and serves for archival and managerial purposes.
 * Provide public audiences access to cultural objects through publishing digital content online.

Museum Metadata Standards

Many museums and cultural heritage centers recognize that given the diversity of art works and cultural objects, no single model or standard suffices to describe cultural works.

The early stages of standardization in archiving, description and cataloging within the museum community began in the late 1990s with the development of standards such as Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA), Spectrum, the Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC), Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO) and the CDWA Lite XML schema. These standards use HTML and XML markup languages for machine processing, publication and implementation. The Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR), originally developed for characterizing books, have also been applied to cultural objects, works of art and architecture. Standards, such as the CCO, are integrated within a Museum’s Collection Management System (CMS), a database through which museums are able to manage their collections, acquisitions, loans and conservation. Scholars and professionals in the field note that the “quickly evolving landscape of standards and technologies” create challenges for cultural documentarians, specifically non-technically trained professionals.

Most collecting institutions and museums use a relational database to categorize cultural works and their images. Relational databases and metadata work to document and describe the complex relationships amongst cultural objects and multi-faceted works of art, as well as between objects and places, people and artistic movements. Relational database structures are also beneficial within collecting institutions and museums because they allow for archivists to make a clear distinction between cultural objects and their images; an unclear distinction could lead to confusing and inaccurate searches.

Metadata, Cultural Objects and Art works

An object’s materiality, function and purpose, as well as the size, requirements and focus of the museum and collection, influence the descriptive depth of the data attributed to the object by cultural documentarians. The established institutional cataloging practices, goals and expertise of cultural documentarians and database structure also influence the information ascribed to cultural objects, and the ways in which cultural objects are categorized. Additionally, museums often employ standardized commercial collection management software that prescribes and limits the ways in which archivists can describe artworks and cultural objects.

Additionally, collecting institutions and museums use Controlled Vocabularies to describe cultural objects and artworks in their collections. Getty Vocabularies and the Library of Congress Controlled Vocabularies are reputable within the museum community and are recommended by CCO standards. Museums are encouraged to use controlled vocabularies that are contextual and relevant to their collections and enhance the functionality of their digital information systems. Controlled Vocabularies are beneficial within databases because they provide a high level of consistency, improving resource retrieval.

Metadata structures, including controlled vocabularies, reflect the ontologies of the systems from which they were created. Often the processes through which cultural objects are described and categorized through metadata in museums does not reflect the perspectives of the maker communities.

Museums, Metadata and the Internet

Metadata have been instrumental in the creation of digital information systems and archives within museums, and have made it easier for museums to publish digital content online. This has enabled audiences who might not have had access to cultural objects due to geographic or economic barriers to have access to them.

In the recent years, as more and more museums have adopted archival standards and created intricate databases, discussions about Linked Data between museum databases have come up in the museum, archival and library science communities. Collection Management Systems (CMS) and Digital Asset Management tools can be local or shared systems. Digital Humanities scholars note many benefits of interoperability between museum databases and collections, while also acknowledging the difficulties achieving such interoperability.