building the forever memory institution: smithsonian collaborations: libraries, archives, &...
DESCRIPTION
Building the Forever Memory Institution: Smithsonian Collaborations: Libraries, Archives, & Museums.Martin R. Kalfatovic. 2009 ASIS&T Annual Meeting: Thriving on Diversity - Information Opportunities in a Pluralistic World. November 11, 2009. Vancouver, BC.TRANSCRIPT
Building the Forever Memory
InstitutionSmithsonian Collaborations:
Libraries, Archives, & Museums
ASIS&TVancouver, BC11 November 2009
Martin R. KalfatovicSmithsonian Libraries
'Forever' institutions such as libraries, universities, museums are especially important in uncertain times because they provide stability and continuity
G. Wayne Clough, 12th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
Vast, But Not Infinite
“I assumed you packed the library in 1,000 volume boxes, each box having a capacity of precisely one cubic meter. All space to the farthest known spiral galaxies would not hold the Universal Library. In fact, you would need this volume of space so often that the number of packed universes would be a figure with only some 60 zeroes less than the figure for the number of volumes… The figure is not infinite, it is a finite figure.”
- Kurd Lasswitz, “The Universal Library.” 1901
• 100 characters (Western European languages, plus spaces and some punctuation)
• Each line has 50 spaces• Each page is 40 lines long• Each book is 500 pages long• Total Books: 100 1,000,000
• Googolplex: 1 followed by a googol (10 100) zeros
Vast, But Not Infinite
The sum of our collections, Libraries, Archives and Museums is Vast, but by most practical – and even impractical counting methodologies – it is finite. Vast, but Finite!
Vast, But Not Infinite
The Memex
In 1945, Vannavar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, outlined the ultimate tool of the near term future, the Memex, in the article “As We May Think”
ARCHIVES
LIBRARIES
MUSEUMS
Memory Institutions
As an agent of change, printing altered methods of data
collections, storage and retrieval systems, and communications
networks used by learned communities throughout Europe
- Elizabeth L. EisensteinThe Printing Revolution in Early Modern
Europe (1983)
Memory Institutions: Museums
Memory Institutions: Museums
26,000,00021,000,0005,000,000Harvard Univ. Herbarium/Mus. Comp. Zoo.
30,000,00021,000,0009,000,000American Museum of Natural History, New York
58,877,30050,000,0008,877,300Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris
60,200,00055,000,0005,200,000Natural History Museum, London
83,000,00078,500,0004,500,000National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC
TotalAnimal Specimens
Plant SpecimensInstitution
Memory Institutions: Museums
Art works: Stephen Weil calculated (in 1990) that in the U.S. alone there were over 8 million art works created:
• 200,000 working artists• 40 works per artist• 8 million total works per
year!
Memory Institutions: Museums
Memory Institutions: Museums
Memory Institutions: Museums
But Is It Google-able?32 million published
books750 million articles
and essays25 million songs500 million images500,000 movies3 million videos, TV
shows and short films
100 billion+ web pages
• Compressed (at today’s standards) this would be about 50 petabytes (about the size of a small-town (U.S.) library building)
But Is It Google-able?
“The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it”
- Vannevar Bush (1945)
“The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it”
- Vannevar Bush (1945)
• 19 Museums & Galleries• 9 Research Centers• 18 Archives• 1 Library (with 20 branches)• 1 Zoo
• 137 million objects• 26.8 million visitors• 188.8 million web
visitors• ~ 6,000 staff
Why Collaborate
• Wherever• Whenever• Whatever
Challenges
• Create a virtual Smithsonian
• Make content relevant
• Meet stakeholder expectations
Create
• Digitization Strategy
• Digital media use policy
• Web and New Media strategy
Quick Win: Flickr Commons
Collection Information Systems
SIRIS
ArtCISNMAH CIS
NASM CIS ACM CIS NMNH RCIS
NPM CISNMAI CIS
Collection Information Systems
SIRIS
ArtCISNMAH CIS
NASM CIS ACM CIS NMNH RCIS
NPM CISNMAI CIS
Archival Storage
Images, Sound, Video
DAM
Collection Information Systems
SIRIS
ArtCISNMAH CIS
NASM CIS ACM CIS NMNH RCIS
NPM CISNMAI CIS
Enterprise Digital Asset Net(EDAN)
Metadata Archival Storage
Images, Sound, Video
DAM
Collection Information Systems
SIRIS
ArtCISNMAH CIS
NASM CIS ACM CIS NMNH RCIS
NPM CISNMAI CIS
Enterprise Digital Asset Net(EDAN)
Metadata
Parent & Child
Scientist EnthusiastColleague
Archival Storage
Images, Sound, Video
DAM
Collections.si.edu+2million records | 265,000 images
Each object in the Museum … would have been associated with a book (or several books) in the Library. However, there would also be many books which could not correspond with any exhibit (the natural history of unicorns, for example, or the geometry of round squares) …
The Natural History of Unicorns
…One had then … a perfectly balanced edifice, in which everything which the human mind is capable of inventing or understanding has its place.
- Andrew Crumey, Pfitz (1995)
The Natural History of Unicorns
Thanks!