museum catalogues

Nik Honeysett, J. Paul Getty Museum, USA

http://www.getty.edu

Abstract

The scholarly catalogue has long been a critical part of a museum's mission, providing authoritative information about collection objects for scholars, students, and the general public. Often based on years of painstaking research and richly illustrated, print catalogues form one of the building blocks of art history. The catalogue's print form, however, is arguably the very component that prevents it from realizing even greater potential. High cost and relatively small print runs limit its accessibility, and printed books cannot easily change to reflect new acquisitions or new scholarly knowledge. While the online environment holds much promise for making collection catalogues more current, interactive, and widely available, museums still face significant financial and organizational challenges in making the transition online. This paper describes the challenges and successes of nine institutions as they step through a project to deliver a scholarly catalogue to their online environment.

Keywords: online scholarly catalogues, electronic publishing, publishing, museum catalogues