Historical Event-based Access To Museum Collections / quote 6 of 8
Historical knowledge locked in museum collections
There is a vast amount of historical knowledge locked in museum collections. This knowledge is often explicitly present in textual descriptions accompanying museum objects or implicitly present through the fact that an object belongs to a particular collection and was collected for a particular purpose. In this sense, objects from one museum collection only tell part of the story, as they present a view on the past from one only perspective, limited to their collection. Through combining objects from different collections, a more comprehensive view of a certain historical period can be given. When unlocked, this knowledge can help casual users understand the significance of museum objects and historical events better and aid experts (curators, art historians and historians) in their search for objects relevant to a topic.