Structure and content of a Museum Data Bank

Trending MCN: Fifty Years of Museum Computing Conferences and Community

“…As seen in the collected agendas, MCN started holding annual meetings for its institutional members in 1973, and MCN's Board of Directors met at least once per year to support the organization (the 10th annual meeting of MCN members in 1982, for example, also featured the 25th meeting of MCN's board of directors). MCN meetings during this time focused primarily on providing technical support for the GRIPHOS system, which reached its zenith in the mid-1970s with the publication of the "Manual for Museum Computer Network GRIPHOS Application" (Vance, 1975). It was clear, however, that there was no future for mainframe systems, and museums were unlikely to adopt a common software platform.…”

“…This may look like a major change, but the history of museum computing shows that while the specific technologies used in museums today have changed dramatically from the terminal/ mainframe systems of the 1960s, the goals, dreams, and aspirations of museum professionals who worked with these systems 50 years ago are quite similar to those who work in museums today (Jones, 2008;Parry, 2007). Museum professionals have different tools at their disposal naturally (Vance and Heller, 1971), and information technology has become more ubiquitous as attitudes and expectations about museum computing have changed (Marty, 2007), but what they are trying to do with technology is much the same, even as new technologies open up opportunities for museum professionals to ask new questions and pursue new ideas.…”