"Janice Klein" <[log in to unmask]> schrieb:
"Clear and accurate text, appropriate type face and proper placement can be done with ...or even a typewriter...mounted on cardboard and taped to the wall. I do it all the time."
> 
> janice
> 
> Janice Klein
> (Chair, Small Museum Adminstrators Committee, AAM)
> Director, Mitchell Museum of the American Indian
> (a tiny unisolated museum)
> [log in to unmask]
> www.mitchellmuseum.org

Dear Janice, dear members of the list,
I wonder what kind of typewriter can be used nowadays to produce good labels. Most typewriters do not have optimal characters for this purpose. As most museums own computers in the meantime, why not using it - together with some data from the documentation program? A good documentation program should be able to produce good labels very fast. All you do is setting the layout and choosing the object fields.

But I would like to make clear that in most cases the positive data from the documentation database do not explain anything. Therefore theses databanks have to be fed also with explanatory material.


But within this discussion we have to make differences between "small object cards" near the objects within showcases and "larger cardboards" mounted on showcases or walls. Mostly the larger cardboards are used to tell the context of an object group. The visitors will find there not only an additive use of words, but real sentences. For most museum curators thinking in scientific dimensions, it seems to be very hard if not impossible to reduce their knowledge to common language and to short sentences. 

A specific problem of the small object cards seems to be that they turn upsidedown when somebody hits the showcase. I saw also many showcases where some of the small cards were missing. A very good (but unfortunately not that flexible) idea seems to be to show in the showcases only objects and to place a larger cardboard near to it, showing simple (outline) drawings and explaining texts.

With regard to the "solution": This might be something for richer museums showing only a few objects. All those museums showing many objects and not being that rich, still have to deal also in the future with small object cards and larger cardboards. 

An interesting new solution is the new invention of PDAs fed by museum personnel on a CMS basis. This inventions allows also less rich museums to offer multimedia explanations to lots of objects. By using CMS, editorial changes may be made even an hour before the exhibition opening...(see MUSEUM AKTUELL August 2005 issue)


Christian

-- 
Verlag Dr. Christian Müller-Straten / MUSEUMS AGENTUR
(In Diskussionslisten steht "CMS" für Dr. Christian Müller-Straten)
Kunzweg 23, 81243 München, T. 089-839 690 43, Fax -44
Mails werden mit täglich aktualisierter PANDA-Software geprüft.
[log in to unmask], www.museum-aktuell.de

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