Dear Krasimir,
Just a very broad brush stroke:
>image of the object should be a part of the catalogue
Certainly, you are quite right.
BUT
>botany and entomology
do not collect objects but specimens! Thus your colleagues are principally
right, if only for the wrong reasons: it is not the number but the ontic
quality that counts in museums (in principle, of course. A million herbarium
sheets is certainly more numbers than a couple of steam engines). At the
same time it would not be very sensible to have an extra index card for each
herbarium sheet because they are, so to speak, index cards themselves. The
only exception would be historical herbarium sheets and the like which do
not only bear botanical but historical evidence as well. The same applies to
entomological type specimens that must be treated as musealia in the strict
sense.
One decisive factor in the necessary distinction is that a sculpture, e. g.,
remains a sculpture even in the museum but a dried plant is no longer a
plant, a dead insect no longer an insect because it is their differentia
specifica to be alive. A 'tiger', however, is not a tiger but a tiger's hide
and glass eyes mounted on a frame, it is already an artefact, the work of an
artisan, maybe even artist - thus it is an object and must be photographed
for documentation.
I know, I know...
Greetings,
Fritz
At 18:11 18.02.1998 -0800, you wrote:
>Hello,
>
>As I head of the Moravian Museum Documentation Centre I was asked to
>write internal guidelines for cataloguing. Being convinced that image of
>the object should be a part of the catalogue I am forcing the curators
>to photograph the objects. Two of our departments are objecting this -
>botany and entomology - they say they are unable to shoot all the
>objects that are coming to their collections, because its too expensive
>and impossible. The botany department aquires about 10.000 items per
>year. Could anybody help me with his, hers experience in that field.
>
>
>Thanks a lot.
>
>Krasimir Damjanov
>
>UNESCO International Summer School of Museology Brno
>http://www.webmuseen.de/ISSOM
>
>or
>mailto: [log in to unmask]
>http://www.fi.muni.cz/mzm
>
>
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