Recoding the Museum

<p>Why has it taken so long to make computers work for the museum sector?</p><p>And why are museums still having some of the same conversations about digital technology that they began back in the late 1960s?</p><p>Does there continue to be a basic ‘incompatibility’ between the practice of the museum and the functions of the computer that explains this disconnect?</p><p>Drawing upon an impressive range of professional and theoretical sources this book offers one of the first substantial histories of museum computing. Its ambitious narrative attempts to explain a series of essential tensions between curatorship and the digital realm. </p><p>Ultimately it reveals how through the emergence of standards increased coordination and celebration (rather than fearing) of the ‘virtual’ the sector has experienced a broadening of participation a widening of creative horizons and ultimately has helped to define a new cultural role for museums. Having confronted and understood its past what emerges is a museum transformed – rescripted re calibrated rewritten reorganised.</p>