Ethnographic treasuries in the computer: Electronic access to a total museum collection

In 1987 the National Museum of Denmark started a documentation project with the goal of introducing information technology in all aspects of the museums work. In the following years, comprehensive artefact databases were established for internal scientific and administrative use by the museum staff. However, from the beginning it was planned that these same databases should to a certain extent, also be accessible to the public, for visitors as well as long distance users. The philosophy behind this plan was a desire to give access to those artefacts normally hidden in storage and also to the knowledge and information, which are to be found in the archives. As a supplement to the exhibits in showcases, which only show small parts of collections, electronic access to entire collections was wanted. In 1992, the first system was launched for The Collection of Ethnography. At present the system deals exclusively with the Eskimo collection (about 9,000 artefacts), but in the coming years it will be extended to cover the complete ethnographic collection (about 80,000 artefacts). The basic material for the system is the above mentioned relational database, which contains about 120 fields of text information and an image of each artefact. The images were originally stored on a Laservision videodisc, but in the visitor system, text and images are integrated on a computer hard disc.