Key Needs of Collecting Institutions - 2002 Deakin University study

09 May 2005

This study reports on the key needs of heritage collections held in a range of public institutions, particularly libraries, museums, galleries and archives.

This study was completed by Deakin University Faculty of Arts Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia & the Pacific. The Brief for this Study defined the main objective as being to identify the current and foreseeable key needs of collecting institutions.

The Brief noted that these collections are held in museums, art galleries, libraries, archives and specialist collections. The Brief also noted that regional and remote collections are an important group for this study.

Libraries, museums, galleries and archives are united in that they all collect movable evidence of a community's heritage. Thus, they share in common a number of core practices:
- Acquisition
- Conservation / preservation
- Storage
- Research
- Communication / exhibition / make accessible

An area of historic difference between the three types of institutions was their method of making collections accessible. To generalise, archives produced finding aids and libraries produced inventories (catalogues), while museums and galleries developed exhibitions and published essays (also known as catalogues) and books. Now, practice across the four types of institution is converging: for example, all four now produce exhibitions (with the potential for essay-style catalogues), and museums and galleries are starting to publish their inventories (catalogues).

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