The Web and Contemporary Collecting: A Powerful Combination

This paper outlines a methodology for the use of the World Wide Web as a vehicle for the collecting of contemporary knowledge and artifacts in certain areas of science and technology. It is proposed that by using company web sites in the fields of communications and computing technologies we can set up virtual collections of these technologies on the web and begin to chronicle their development over time. In addition we can set up strict selection criteria which can be applied over pre-determined periods of time so that a representative set of artifacts for the museum collections can be preserved that truly reflect the successful developments in these rapidly-evolving technologies.