Information Organization and Access in Museums: A Survey on Museums in Ankara

Abstract

With the transition from an industrial society into information society, the indispensability of information for societies, and consequently the development of information technology has directly affected museum services including cultural knowledge and heritage. In the past, museums had traditional services, such as collecting, keeping and exhibiting objects. However, today a contemporary information-centered approach is followed in which the information conveyed via various objects are transferred to people through new methods and techniques. Regarded as information centres, museums have been rendered a signicant role in arranging information on the basis of understandable standard and sustainable/readable technology for the future. In this way, information conveyed by objects, and other supporting information resources can be maintained, transferred to the next generation, and thus an effective museum management can be achieved. This study aims to evaluate the applications and services that museums have developed to arrange the objects in their collections and make them accessible in accordance with information technologies. 40 state and private museums in Ankara have been included in the research. In the study, the descriptive method along with observation and interviewing have been used. The research indicates the following: the museums included in the study do not use an information system; the museum objects are not dened in accordance with international guidelines, principles, rules, standards, schemas and models; national and international visibility and interoperability on information access systems are not provided; the opportunity of access in terms of seeking, discovering, reading and sharing information is not given

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