Arbitrary borders? New partnerships for cultural heritage siblings---libraries, archives and museums: Creating integrated descriptive systems

This thesis explores the topic of convergence of descriptive systems between different types of cultural heritage institutions---specifically libraries, archives and museums. The primary purpose for creating integrated descriptive systems is to enable researchers to enjoy "one-stop-shopping" for information, being able to access information about cultural heritage resources through one portal, whether the resources reside in libraries, archives or museums. Beginning with definitions of each type of cultural heritage institution and a historical overview of the evolution of libraries, archives and museums and their respective professions, the thesis then provides an analysis of similarities and differences between these institutions with respect to purpose, procedures, and perspective. This analysis serves to clarify the relationship between them. Following these introductory sections, the latter half of the thesis first provides a historical overview of the evolution of each discipline's descriptive practices with a brief comparative analysis before providing an overview of various methods by which these institutions can create integrated descriptive systems. While differences between the institutions are addressed in the thesis, the overall emphasis is on the complementary similarities between the institutions and the potential for cross-sectoral collaboration that these similarities enable. The overall conclusion of the thesis is that creating integrated descriptive systems between libraries, archives and museums is desirable and well within current technological capabilities. This is demonstrated in part by the systems, methods, and projects that have already been developed, which indicate how interest continues to increase in this area of development.