This page is part of the International Guidelines for Museum Object Information: The CIDOC Information Categories. Developed by the International Committee for Documentation (CIDOC) of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), this is a description of the Information Categories that can be used when developing records about the objects in museum collections. For more information about the Guidelines, turn to the initial page
This Introduction includes the following sections:
The International Guidelines for Museum Object Information: The CIDOC Information Categories is a description of the Information Categories that can be used when developing records about the objects in museum collections. The Guidelines can be adopted by an individual museum, national documentation organization, or system developer, as the basis for a working museum documentation system.
The Guidelines incorporate the following elements:
The Guidelines are based on the experience of the members of the project team and an analysis of the best practice in a number of other documentation projects. They are compatible with the major national and international descriptions of museum information, including related research in the United States, Canada, the UK, and France, by other CIDOC Working Groups and international initiatives. More details about these initiatives are given in a brochure on Developments in International Museum and Cultural Heritage Information Standards (Getty Art History Information Program and the International Council of Museums. International Committee for Documentation, 1993).
The categories of information developed by most of these documentation projects have been described as a data standard or an information standard. A "standard" is a mutually agreed designation that helps to ensure a consistent result (Getty Art History Information Program and the International Council of Museums. International Committee for Documentation, 1993). In the current state of this project, we have avoided the use of the term "standard," considering that it should only be applied to a product once it has achieved widespread acceptance. We hope this will be the case with a future edition of the Guidelines.
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The Guidelines support the following key objectives of museum documentation:
The need to protect cultural property against damage, loss, theft, and crimes against humanity has acted as an incentive to the development of standardized documentation practices. The 1970 UNESCO Convention on the means of prohibiting and preventing the illicit import, export, and transfer of ownership of cultural property recommends that national inventories be established to identify cultural property. Inventorying objects in a standardized way can help prevent loss and aid the recovery of lost items.
The availability of good documentation also ensures that knowledge about objects extends beyond the objects themselves. It provides a foundation for the use of a collection by curators, researchers, and the public.
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The Guidelines have a number of main roles (Getty Art History Information Program and the International Council of Museums. International Committee for Documentation, 1993):
The Guidelines can be used as the basis of an inventory of the collections or a full catalog:
The Guidelines are designed to support the needs of all disciplines represented in museums, including archaeology, cultural history, art, science and technology, and natural science. For convenience, the text uses the term "object," but this should be taken to cover both objects and specimens.
The Guidelines can be used to support the documentation of individual objects and overall acquisitions. It is important to develop information about each individual object in the collection, except in specialist circumstances such as groups of natural science specimens or bulk finds from archaeological excavations. If staff resources are limited, the priority should be placed on the development of inventory level information.
Note that the Guidelines are not:
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The Guidelines include definitions and illustrations of a number of Information Groups and Information Categories.
Each Information Group describes a particular aspect of the information about an object, such as:
Each Information Group contains one or more Information Categories, describing related pieces of information. For example, the Acquisition group includes:
As noted above, one of the most important roles of the Guidelines is as a reference model which can be used when designing a museum documentation system. It is anticipated that the Guidelines will be used as the basis for new and revised systems, in association with other standards.
An individual system needs to incorporate each Information Group and Category that is appropriate to the needs of the intended user. The precise set of Information Groups and Categories will vary from museum to museum:
Conversely, museums with specialist requirements will need additional Information Categories not listed in the Guidelines. This set of categories is not intended to be comprehensive or restrictive, but provides a nucleus on which to build. Additional categories may be included in future editions.
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The use of standardized format rules and terminology controls assists the production of consistent documentation. These principles are emphasized in the description of the Information Categories.
Content format rules define the structure of an entry in an Information Category. For example, in the case of a personal name, the most important component of the name may be recorded first, with other elements following in a consistent sequence. This assists a recorder in the development of uniform entries and a user in the efficient retrieval of information. Many museums have adopted well established library standards, such as the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (1988) to control this aspect of their documentation.
Terminology control can be used to establish the appropriate words to use in an Information Category. It also assists a recorder to develop consistent information and helps a user search for information. The process of developing a controlled terminology includes:
A museum may decide to develop one or more controlled terminologies that are unique to its particular needs, such as the coding used in condition reports. However, in complex cases such as object and personal names, materials, and techniques, it is usually preferable to adopt existing published terminologies such as standardized thesauri. The widespread use of established thesauri will facilitate searching for information across collections.
Two international standards governing the development of thesauri are published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) (1985 and 1986). These provide rules for determining the scope and purpose of the thesaurus, the identification of terms, the choice of term form and relationships among terms, and formatting possibilities.
In 1988, the MDA organized a conference on Terminology for museums which reviewed the experience of many museums and described progress with the development of terminologies. The proceedings of the conference include an extensive source list and bibliography (Terminology for museums, 1990). A number of cooperative projects have made considerable progress since then, including two initiatives of AHIP:
Other guides to museum terminology include:
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file: guideint.htm; author: CIDOC; updated June 1995