European Standards Map

Iceland

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

Lilja Árnadóttir, Head of Collections Management, National Museum of Iceland
Frosti Johannsson, Systems Development, National Museum of Iceland

National Overview ¦ International Initiatives ¦ National Initiatives ¦ Regional Initiatives ¦ Procedural Standards ¦ Information Management Standards ¦ Future Vision for EMII ¦ Home

National Overview

The national definition of museum in Iceland is published in the National Heritage Act and National Gallery Act: [To be supplied by partner]

The total number of museums in Iceland is 51 with collections totalling 3,616,195 objects. The partner estimated that 50% (or less) of Icelandic museums comply with the ICOM Code of Professional Ethics. The ratio of public museums versus private owned and run museums is 44 to 7. Public museums can be defined as:

'Museums and collections open for the public most often in possession of either the state or a region.'

And private museums as:

'Museums and collections governed as a freehold property eg owned by a private person, society or a company.'

Categories of Public Museums

Categories of Private Museums

Sources: Information gathered by interviewing museums directors and curators. Information from the National Museum of Iceland.

Employment

There are an estimated 120 people in full time (more than 35 hours per week) employment in Icelandic museums and 20 in part-time paid employment. There are no volunteers, it is noted that voluntary work is very unusal in Iceland. The figures do not include warding staff and guides.

Information Management

Percentage of cultural heritage held in Museums that is:

Partners Comment: It should be noted that in some museums everything is documented while in others part of the collection is waiting to be documented.

For documented collections, what percentage is:

(1) To national minimum standard where one exists or international alternative. (2) Catalogued beyond national minimum standard.

An estimated 35 museums record information digitally all of which is held in institutional databases at present. There are no national guidelines for documentation. The database system, SARPUR, conceived and developed at the National Museum and launched in spring 2000 aims to standardise and coordinate registration of information about cultural heritage in Iceland. SARPUR will function within both public and private cultural-historical museums and companies dealing with cultural heritage. Museums will access SARPUR via the Internet and contribute their data which will be held on a server based at the National Museum.

Images and Multimedia

There ae no published CD-Roms in Iceland and no interactive gallery systems although 2 museums are planning to install gallery interactives by the end of 2001.

Percentage of museums with digital images of all or part of their collections:

Digital images were produced for the following purposes:

Museums and the Internet

It is estimated that 40 museums have Internet access for web browsing and email. 25 have a Web site of which 10 are brochureware only and 15 include educational content. There are no collections databases on-line at present but 20 museums plan to have part of their collections databases on-line by December 2002.

¦ National Overview ¦ International Initiatives ¦ National Initiatives ¦ Regional Initiatives ¦ Procedural Standards ¦ Information Management Standards ¦ Future Vision for EMII ¦ Home

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.

The Icelandic national committee of ICOM consists of 40 individual and 6 institutional members across several international committees. Not many of them have had an opportunity to be active in their committees work through attending meetings and the general conference. In 1999 a national committee of ICOMOS was established in Iceland. The Ministry of Culture and Education supports the work of these national committees.

See Nordic Outline ("Nordisk Outline") for details of an international initiative involving Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden to harmonise their respective translations of Outline. There are no national or regional initiatives to report.

¦ National Overview ¦ International Initiatives ¦ National Initiatives ¦ Regional Initiatives ¦ Procedural Standards ¦ Information Management Standards ¦ Future Vision for EMII ¦ Home

Procedural Standards

There is no national collection management standard. Most museums work to a collecting policy which specifies the parameters of their collecting activity. The national museums i.e. National Museum of Iceland and National Gallery of Iceland are required by legislation to acquire in certain fields.

We also asked what Collections Management Software is in use:

• SARPUR
• Virtual Collection

¦ National Overview ¦ International Initiatives ¦ National Initiatives ¦ Regional Initiatives ¦ Procedural Standards ¦ Information Management Standards ¦ Future Vision for EMII ¦ Home

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 Comment: The information system SARPUR is made for standardising and coordinating registration information about cultural heritage. There are eight catalogues in the system: objects, photographs, ethnological material, historical relics, listed houses, archaological investigations, church/religous relics and place names. Sarpur incorporates Outline for Cultural Material and a term list with 10.000 Icelandic terms drawn from existing museum catalogues.

For cataloging listed houses and archeological remains there are a limited number of term lists. Between 1960 and 1970 there was published by TANUM - NORLI Oslo term list dealing with textiles and textile technique. The list is in Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, Finnish, German, French and English.

In the early 1990's the National Heritage Board determined that the classification system 'Outline for Cultural Materials' should be used in cultural history museums in Iceland including the National Museum of Iceland. This applies to approximately 15 museums with collections estimated at 50,000 objects.

See Nordic Outline ("Nordisk Outline") for details of an international initiative involving Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden to harmonise their respective translations of Outline.

Content and Structure Description Standards

The Icelandic partner was not able to answer the questions in relation to content and structure description standards.

Technological Standards and Protocols

The Icelandic 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.

¦ National Overview ¦ International Initiatives ¦ National Initiatives ¦ Regional Initiatives ¦ Procedural Standards ¦ Information Management Standards ¦ Future Vision for EMII ¦ Home

Future Vision

The Icelandic 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.'

EMII is a good opportunity to learn how museums and institutions in Europe work with the cultural heritage in terms of collecting, registering, classifying and so on. We will be able to take advantage of what our colleagues have been doing in other countries through so many years. The museum structure in Iceland is young and relatively inexperienced. The growth in numbers of museums is a recent phenonmenon coupled with the rise in qualified staff working in the museum profession. This has led to a rapid growth in Icelandic museums since the 1970s.

Because of the circumstances; Iceland being so small we have the privilege to being able to overview the situation quite well. But even if we are small we have almost the same issues to deal with as in other countries. This means it is very important for museums in Iceland to get to know how problems are solved in other countries. In EMII there is a opportunity to get answers to questions we are dealing with every day in our work. Is it question of software, different programs and systems and so on. We will be able to get information about classification, terms list, standards and so on.

Our work on SARPUR [National Museum of Iceland Collections Management System] is an example of how our small circumstances helped us to make a holistic system dealing with the cultural heritage. I do hope that in some way the work with EMII can advise us in our very important work to get all the information into our product SARPUR. We are now planning how we can solve our task to finish the unregistered part of our collection. It would be a real benefit to be able to do that.

Our work with SARPUR could be a sort of demo how a very small situation or scale can be an advantage in work like this.

¦ National Overview ¦ International Initiatives ¦ National Initiatives ¦ Regional Initiatives ¦ Procedural Standards ¦ Information Management Standards ¦ Future Vision for EMII

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

Created on 07 July 2000