Museum Informatics
Since 1996, I have been working to define museum informatics as an emerging, interdisciplinary field of study relevant to many disciplines from information science to museum studies. Over the past few decades, advances in information science and technology have dramatically changed the way people think about museums and their information resources. Museum professionals and museum visitors have developed new conceptions of why museums exist and new expectations of what museums should offer.
In my research, I have explored the nature of museum informatics and the current state of research into museum informatics from the Library and Information Science perspective:
Marty, P.F., Rayward, W.B., & Twidale, M.B. (2003). Museum Informatics. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 37, 259-294.
Marty, P.F. (2003). Museum Informatics. In Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science (p.1906-1913). New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc.
Marty, P.F. (2002). Museums. In Encyclopedia of Communication and Information (pp.620-628). New York: Macmillan Reference.
Marty, P.F. (2000). Museum informatics: sociotechnical infrastructures in museums. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science, 26 (3), 22-24. Available online at http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Mar-00/marty.html
Marty, P.F. (1999). Museum informatics and collaborative technologies: the emerging socio-technological dimension of information science in museum environments. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50 (12), 1083-1091.
I recently completed an edited book about museum informatics with Katherine Burton Jones (Harvard University) which includes twenty chapters of original work by leading academics and practitioners working in museum informatics related areas:
Marty, P.F. & Jones, K.B. (Eds). (2008). Museum Informatics: People, Information, and Technology in Museums. New York: Routledge. [Table of Contents (pdf) | Routledge | Amazon.com ]