Digital Archives
Digital Online Archives and Collections
The growing number of searchable online archives in museums all over the world have improved the access to unique artworks, artifacts, collections and exhibitions for researchers and the general public alike. Send us the links to your favourite archives!
Canada
Glenbow Museum
Glenbow Museum has recently begun to digitize its art and artifact collections. What you will currently find in the Glenbow Museum and Art Collection Database is a small selection from our art, community history, military history, and Native North America collections, primarily focusing on the history of Alberta.
McCord Museum
The McCord Museum conserves and presents over 1,440,000 objects, images and manuscripts that are irreplaceable reflections of the social history and material culture of Montreal, Quebec and Canada. Currently, the “Keys to History” digital on-line collection — created in collaboration with seven other museums — is made up of 137,000 artifacts. More than 119,000 artifacts held by the McCord and some 17,500 artifacts held by the partner museums are available for viewing.
France
The ICOMOS Open Archive
ICOMOS is a non-governmental international organisation dedicated to the conservation of the world’s monuments and sites. The ICOMOS Open Archive: Eprints on Cultural Heritage, is a global archive specialising in the conservation and restoration of monuments, sites and landscapes.
Réunion des Musées nationaux de France
http://www.photo.rmn.fr The Réunion des Musées nationaux de France‘s Photo Agency has put together a veritable archival treasure. You need only a word, a title or an author to initiate a search that will always reward you. This Oracle-based site gives access to all national museums. The list is a long one including the Musée du Louvre, d’Orsay, Pompidou, Guimet, Picasso, de l’Orangerie, le Musée Rodin or Delacroix, the Bibliothèque de l’Institut, as well as the Chantilly, Compiègne, Écouen, les Granges de Port-Royal, Fontainebleau, Ajaccio, Nice, Matisse, Message biblique de Chagall, Les Eyzies-de-Tayac and the Musée de Préhistoire.
Germany
The Cranach Digital Archive (CDA)
The Cranach Digital Archive (CDA) is an interdisciplinary collaborative research resource, providing access to art historical, technical and conservation information on paintings by Lucas Cranach (c.1472 – 1553) and his workshop. The repository presently provides information on more than 400 paintings including 5000 images and documents from 19 partner institutions.
Spain
Museo Nacional Del Prado
Access online to approximately 1000 works of the Museo Nacional Del Prado‘s collection (almost 5000 works available in Spanish version). This data base will continue to expand until it holds the complete collection. The Advanced Search engine facilitates consultation, using categories such as artist, title of work, subject, chronology and reference number.
USA
Archives & Museum Informatics
Archives & Museum Informatics is a partnership of two respected leaders, researchers and theorists in museum and cultural informatics: David Bearman and Jennifer Trant. They founded the annual Museums and the Web conference on the belief that knowledge and best practices should be openly shared amongst colleagues. These became internationally known venues for information-sharing across a broad range of cultural professions, and attracted a diverse, vibrant group of managers, marketers, new media / technologists, curators, educators, and researchers. They’ve also established an online community of cultural heritage professionals.
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian’s Collections Search Center provides easy “one-stop searching” of more than 7.4 million of the Smithsonian’s museum, archives, library and research holdings and collections. The Research Information System (SIRIS) is an amazing database of 568,100 images, video and sound files from Smithsonian museums, archives, and libraries.
