European Standards Map

Germany

EMII gratefully acknowledges the help of the following people in Germany:

Monika Hagedorn-Saupe, Insititute for Museum Studies, State Museums of Berlin
Axel Ermert, Insititute for Museum Studies, State Museums of Berlin

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National Overview

The definition of museum has been under discussion by the German Museum Association (DMB) for some time as continuously reported in its journal 'Museumskunde'. For the time being, the ICOM definition has been officially adopted, in its original language form. For the German Museums Statistics, the IfM uses a slightly broader definition, consisting of 4 operational criteria.

Germany is a federal state composed of 16 Bundesländer with far reaching autonomy in cultural matters. There is no single act or series of acts at national level (federal government) or at the level of any of the 16 Bundesländer governing the activities of museums in Germany. There are a number of legislation issues addressed in a variety of acts that are relevant to all museums, for example labour relations, or valid for certain museums only. Some museums at 'national' level or ranking at high level in the Bundesländer are legally established as public corporate bodies or foundations (Stifungsgesetz). For example this applies to the State Museums of Berlin of the Stiftung Preubischer Kulturbesitz (SMB/SPK).

The ICOM Code of Ethics was translated by ICOM Germany and officially issued to all German museums in 1998 (German version of the ICOM Code of Ethics), following its publication in the former DDR in 1978. There is no formal commitment to the code by German museums. However, Germany has the largest number of ICOM members in Europe (1,880) for whom the code should be a binding one. On this basis it is not unjustified to assume adherance to the code.

There is no single organisation or body responsible for co-ordinating national museum documentation and information management standards. There are state bodies (for example Museumsämter and Landesstellen) in most Bunderländer as well as independent museum associations in most of them which together carry the main burden of museum counselling. For Germany as a whole, there are 2 main sources for museum statistics, with the Institut für Museumskunde (IfM) having the widest coverage.

The Institut für Museumskunde, a research institute of the SMB within the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), is the only body that works for all museums throughout Germany. It aims to monitor the national and international scene and offers advice on request. It does not have the authority to issue formal rules, guidelines, standards but it does issue reference material, guides, state-of-the-art papers, focus documents etc.

The regional museum associations and counselling bodies cover many of the practical aspects of museum documentation. At the Bundesländer level, are some special interest groups, pertaining to the given region, which serve as fora on documentation matters. The DMB has a special interest group "Dokumentation" (which holds meetings twice a year and serves as a forum of exchange of experience, and of continuing education). At times, ministries in the invidual Bundesländer adopt a co-ordinated approach to initiatives in a limited number of museums directly under their control. For example, development of documentation software.

Finally, some overall harmonisation results from de facto developments such as the collaborative use of the same software in a same subject area, for example art history.

The total number of museums in Germany (IfM statistics) in 1998 is 5,752. The IfM also counted 484 non-commercial galleries/exhibition centres in 1998.

In 1998 the IfM counted 3,044 public museums (run under different forms of state authority), 1,097 'private' museums and 325 combined museums. (IfM statistics)

Employment

The 1992 survey of the Association of German municipalities lists 13,323 full-time, 6,095 part-time staff, 4,345 volunteers and 1,973 free-lance workers employed in its 2090 (public and private) museums. Note: this only refers to 2,090 of the then 4,475 German museums (as counted by the IfM).

Information Management

The partner was not able to supply the percentage of undocumented versus documented collections and to what level, basic (to a national minimum standard) or catalogued in detail. According to the 1998 questionnaire, 1,158 museums use computers for object documentation, another 385 plan to do so in the coming year. There is no one single national museum object database in Germany, with full coverage nation-wide or by subject area. There is, however, one prominent database in the subject area of art history with supra-local coverage, and there are at least 2 regional museum databases construction in Bayern and Sachsen Bundesland.

Images and Multimedia

In 1997, at least 349 museums used computers to store digital images, and another 160 planned to do so. It was not possible to discern for what purpose in each case the digital images had been produced. The IfM holds a collection of some 150 museum CD ROMs covering some 100 museums. The 1997 survey showed 194 museums using interactive gallery systems.

Museums and the Internet

1,410 museums have Internet access for web browsing, based on 62.3% of museums responding to a 1998 survey. 827 museums have a Web site of which 143 explicitly indicate in the 1998 survey that they present collection objects on the web. In 1997, 635 German museums with email addresses were registered with the IfM. The figure will, when updated now, be considerably higher.

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International, National and Regional Initiatives

We asked partners to describe current or recently completed international initiatives to facilitate remote access to cultual hertiage information. These can include participation in professional working groups and other EC funded projects.

• Initiative details

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Procedural Standards

There are no formal collections management procedures in Germany. Basic literature exists, and selection is given below. Some of this literature is educational, for example staff training. It is assumed that larger and specialist museums have developed in-house bespoke procedures.

We also asked what Collections Management Software is in use:

Procedural standards in use:

• Inventarisation und Sammlung in den Heimatmuseum / Heinz A. Knorr. Halle 1958. This booklet formed a de facto standard in the former GDR for many museums of local history and continues to be a basis of collection management in many cases.

• Inventarisierung / ed. by Rheinisches Museumsamt. - Bonn 1985. An evolving standard compiled in 6 contributions by experts, this booklet summarizes basic collection management procedures. Given its originator - due to Germany's federal structure, it particularly served as a tool in areas of Northrhine-Westfalia. A basic introduction rather than a formalized procedure.

• Inventarisierung, Dokumentation, Bestandsbewahrung / Westflisches Museumsamt. - Munster 1996. A basic introduction, with a large bibliography covering conservation and the processing of individual material types, rules for catalogue cards, and rules for computer systems using HIDA.

• Datenfeldkatalog zur Grundinventarisierung / ed. by Viktor Prstler. - Deutscher Museumsbund 1993. A report of a Working Group of the nation-wide German Museums Association, specifying 29 essential data fields for any object documentation, and some general hints.

• Inventarisieren der Museumsbestnde (IDM) mit der IDM-Karteikarte / ed.by Museum Association Niedersachsen & Bremen, 1994. A basic handbook for the keeping and make-up of manual catalogue cards for museums, and literature for the processing of special material types.

• Vorschlge zur systematischen Beschreibung von Keramik = Suggestions for the systematic recording of pottery = Propositions pour ... / Rheinisches Landesmuseum, 1986. A trilingual guide for describing form, parts, and other data for pottery, together with vocabulary, formsheet, classification and colour terms concordance.

• Pragmatischer Leitfaden zur Inventarisierung von Textilien in den Freilichtmuseen Finsterau und Massing / Winfried Helm, M.-L. Segl, 1992. A useful, comprehensive guide for the description of textiles, their types, parts, features and their conservation.

• Leitfaden zur Keramikbeschreibung (Mittelalter - Neuzeit): Terminologie - Typologie - Technologie / Werner Endres et al., 1987. A handbook proposing 11 data categories for description of pottery, lists the shapes, surface features, technology and terminology.

• Empfehlungen zur Sammlungsdokumentation in den nichtstaatlichen Museen sowie zur Durchfhrung von Inventuren / Schsische Landesstelle für Museumswesen [no date, ca. 1999]. A 4 p.-leaflet, within a series, reminding museums of accessioning, labelling, and stock-taking of objects.

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Information Management Standards

We asked about:

• Content and Resource description standards including term lists, Classification Syatems and Thesauri
• Content and Structure Description Standards
• Technological Standards and Protocols

Content and Resource Description Standards

Partners Comments: Dictionarium Museologicum is to some degree known in the German museum world, but does not seem to have its emphasis on collection description. Also, its use seems to be restricted partly because of lacking terms, partly because some term translations are challenged.

ISO 5127-3 is a carefully done (though not exhaustive) classification and a defining tool but does not seem to be widespread yet in German museums. A German translation to be officially released had been envisaged but this has not yet materialized. Valuable and very comprehensive foreign-language sources like the "Vocabulaires" accompanying the Inventaire Génerale, or the AAT can be taken to be known, and are discussed, to some degree but do not yet seem to be used on a regular basis in German museums, to some degree because of the language barrier. Translation of some such sources as a major undertaking has been discussed, without any known results by now. LCSH does not seem to be used in German museums.

ICONCLASS is being used in a number of collections and is referred to for use by the HIDA/MIDAS system. The use of "Costume Vocabulary" and of SHIC can be assumed for some museums while none of "Nomenclature" is presently known.

Term Lists in use include:

• Gefe und Formen: eine Typologie für Museen und Sammlungen / Werner Endres, München 1996. This is an evolving standard with around 860 terms . It covers formal shapes, groups vessels into 23 main groups together with definitions for each of the some 860 types. Many are illustrated. The list was produced in conjunction with the "Oberbegriffsdatei" and contains special hints for users of the HIDA software.

• Schlagwortnormdatei (SWD). Thisi is an evolving standard with around 943,000 terms. The SWD is a co-operative project of the Deutsche Bibliothek together with important partners since 1982 and is used in indexing books from all subject areas. It is held in electronic form, as CDROM and on microfiche. It comprises 135,000 subject headings, 154,000 person names, 102,000 geographical headings, 60,000 corporate body headings. 473,000 terms are synonyms. A discussion, and testing attempts, are going on with some German museums to determine whether the vocabulary can also be used for museum purposes.

• Allgemeines Künstler-Kexikon (AKL) / München: Saur, 1996. An evolving standard with around 30,000 terms. Along with the ULAN, the authoritative and most comprehensive file of artists' names. A completely revised version of the older Thieme-Becker Künstlerlexikon and the IKD. Available in print and on CD-ROM.

• Oberbegriffsdatei / Landesstelle für die nichtstaaatlichen Museen in Bayern. A pool of some 6,000 + 2,500 upper level description terms (a more hierarchical/thesaurus structuring consecutively for partial fields is underway), having emerged in the German Federal Länder Bayern, Westfalen and Sachsen in the course of applying the software HIDA. Available in electronic form and used in around 70 museums.

• Müllers großes deutsches Ortsbuch / Wuppertal: Post- und Ortsbuchverlag Müller, 27th ed., 1999. As a standard name book for settlement places of Germany, this is the foremost authority file consulted in cataloguing. Does not contain historical place names.

Classification systems in use include:

• Systematik zur Inventarisierung kulturgeschichtlicher Bestnde in Museen / ed. by Hessischer Museumsverband, Kassel 1993. A broad system of ordering, with 18 main groups, 132 subgroups, and a correspondingly higher number of classes is offered, for the grouping of objects of cultural history, accompanied by a model object card for use in manual systems.

• Basisbegriffe zur Inventarisierung historischer Kleidung / ed. by Museumsverband Sachsen-Anhalt, [1998]. German-language version largely, but not completely identical to ICOM's "Vocabulary of basic terms for cataloguing costume"

• Systematik kulturhistorischer Sachgter / Walter Trachsler. - Bern: Haupt. A classification, in 10 main groups, for objects of cultural history. It has a prominent status in museums/collections of this type.

• SHIC Social History and Industry Classification - Deutsche bersetzung / Museum der Arbeit Hamburg, 2000

Content and Structure Description Standards

Partners Comments: ISO 639 and ISO 3166 are widespread in a number of communication areas (though other systems - particularly in the country code field - do exist), not the least through a number of applications through EU and EU data bases. They do not seem to be used in museums, though.

The ISO yyyy/mm/dd standard is well known in many computer areas but in the other communication areas the dd/mm/yyyy format is the one mainly used (as is the case in this EMII questionnaire). This seems different from Austria where yy/mm/dd seems more often used. Other than these, the metric system is fully used in Germany (including length, weight applications etc.) notwithstanding traditional systems to be used in everyday practice and - thus - , of course, in museum object descriptions, especially those dating back some time.

Technological Standards and Protocols

The German partner was not able to answer the questions in relation to: data presentation and encoding standards, image format standards, searching distributed databases and protection of intellectual property.

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Future Vision

The German partners response to our question:

'Please use this space to describe ways in which you consider EMII should develop to provide a value added resource to museums in your country. Feel free to address any aspect of our current remit or to propose new roles. You may be as detailed as you like and include references to publications, Web sites, iniatives etc. Whilst we are developing our vision for EMII's future activities we also want to ensure that we capture your needs and concerns.'

While this item will be discussed still in much more detail, not the least as a follow-up of the next Steering Committee meetings, 2 main remarks can certainly be made at this stage:

1) It is important to take full advantage of the European survey on which some work has been invested over the last months, but still, work has only started. This is a cumulative effort and also one which requires work to detail, so full profit can be gained only after a period of time. Continuing and improving the survey is an importnat task to be pursued further by EMII.

2) Building on the results of 1), the EMII Web site and its staff services should be extended considerably, to form an authoritative, comprehensive platform for European museums. This includes both a considerably extended link list and different offers of services, such as relating to EU museum-related programmes, but also advice and useful hints on practical questions.
3) Considering that more and more work is (expected) these days (to be) carried out in projects, often extremely limited in time or even short-lived, a central reference "backbone" becomes of more and more importance. EMII is an ideal toll to form such a backbone, and should definitely be continued so as to ensure the presence of it least one stable, permanent, reliable infratsructure "backbone" to which to refer in the great and sometimes not fully overseeable wealth of individual initiatives and projects.

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Funded by the European Commission -Education and Culture Directorate-General - Raphaël Programme

Created on 07 July 2000