European Standards Map

Netherlands

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

Jeanne Hogenboom, Bureau IMC
Karien Beijers, Research Student, Reinwardt Academie

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

National Overview

The ICOM definition of museum serves as the national definition of museum in the Netherlands:

"A museum is a non-profitmaking, permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, and open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates, and exhibits, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of man and his environment"

There is no national legislation governing the activities of museums.

The respondents estimated that 50% (or less) of museums in the Netherlands comply with the ICOM Code of Professional Ethics. However:

'In the autumn of 1999 the Netherlands Museums Association (NMV) distributed a second, revised edition of the Code of Professional Ethics for Museums in the Netherlands. The first edition was published in 1991, after two intensive years of consultation in the Dutch museum world. The text is based on the ICOM Code of Professional Ethics (1987), which was translated and adapted to the Dutch situation in 1989 and 1991. Since its publication in 1991, the Code of Professional Ethics for Museums in the Netherlands has certainly justified itself. Particularly as a guideline in ethical matters and as a means of self-regulation, the code serves the museum sector well.

The Committee for the Code of Professional Ethics, which was appointed by the National Museum Advisors Liaison Group (LCM), the SMJK, the NFVM, ICOM-Nederland and the NMV, has had to state a recommendation on the application of the code only on a few occasions. In 1998 a change was made in the articles on 'Deaccessioning and Selection', and a supplement on 'Dealing with dead animal material from zoos' was added. In its conditions for membership, the NMV has stated that members are expected to use the Code of Professional Ethics for Museums in the Netherlands as the basis of their dealings. A similar condition is used by the Netherlands Museum Register Foundation with respect to registered museums.' De Nederlandse Museumvereniging http://www.museumvereniging.nl/engels/nmv/ethics/index.html
There is no organisation responsible for co-ordinating museum documentation and information at a national level. The total number of museums in the Netherlands is estimated as 942 with collections totalling an estimated 36,000,000 objects. The ratio of public museums versus private owned and run museums is 801 to 141.

Public museums can be defined as:

'those mainly funded by government institutions.'

And private museums as: 'those not dependent on government funding. '

Categories of Public Museums

Categories of Private Museums

Sources: Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS) or Statistics Netherlands, the statistics used in this survey are from their latest publication on museums in 1997. Adriaans, W., J. van den Berg, L. Breure en A.B.M. melief, Alles uit de kast, op weg naar een nationaal investeringsprogrammea digitale infrastructuur cultureel erfgoed, (Utrecht, 1998) Museums in the Netherlands, Facts en Figures 1997, Icom-Nederland.

http://www.museumvereniging.nl/engels/nmv/projects/musreg.htm

Employment

There are an estimated 5,071 people in full time (more than 35 hours per week) employment , 1,637 in part-time paid employment and a further 8,030 working on a voluntary basis. [Source: Statistics Netherlands (CBS). For 1997 the number of volunteers could not have been quantified, based on research of former years, there are presumably over 8,000 volunteers working in museums.]

Information Management

Percentage of cultural heritage held in Museums that is:

500 museums record information digitally of which 370 museums use professional systems and the remaining use their own systems. All data is held institutional databases and should be recorded in compliance with "Basisregistratie" the national documenation guidelines. The partner was not able to answer how much is documented to a basic level and how much is catalogued in detail.

Images and Multimedia

The Dutch partner was not able to quantify the percentage of museums with digital images of all or part of their collections and for what purpose these have been produced. 35 museums have published approximately 60 CD-Roms. About 50 to 70 museums are planning to install interactive gallery systems and are currently developing these. Around 130 museums are planning to create interactive gallery systems.

Museums and the Internet

It is estimated that around 660 museums have Intenet access for Web browsing and email. Around 300 musweums have their own Web site of which 295 are brochureware only, 2 have educational content and 3 have collections databases on-line.

¦ 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.

• Initiative details

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

Procedural Standards

There is no national collections management procedural standard in the Netherlands. The UK standard, Spectrum, is used as a guideline. The NMV is investigating the potential for introducing a translated version.

We also asked what Collections Management Software is in use:

¦ 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

Het Nederlands Bureau voor Bibliotheekwezen en Informatieverzorging NBBI, het Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD, Netherlands Institute for Art History), Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst (RBK, Netherlands Office for fine Arts) and Landelijk Contact Museum Consulenten (LCM, National Museum Advisors Liaison Group) started a survey to get an overview of terminology recources. 913 museums received a questionaire, 510 museums responded. The report was used as source of information for this survey.

In The Netherlands the AAT is in translation but is not yet used by museums. The expectation is that museums will adopt AAT on completion of the translation. Information is available on the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) Web site. The AAT is used as a model for the thesaurus of the Netherlands Antropology Museums (Overleg Volkenkundige Musea, OVM).

Term lists in use include:

• Mardoc IV

Thesauri include:

• Systematische Natuurhistorische Trefwoordenlijst used in Natural History museums.
• Thesaurus Oecologische Omschrijving Vindplaatsen used in Natural History museums.
• GEO and TAX used by Natural History Museums with fossil collections

Content and Structure Description Standards

MARC format is a standard used by some museums and AACR2 is not used at all. GIF, JPEG and TIFF are all used but it was not possible to quantify them individually.

Technological Standards and Protocols

The Dutch 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. They noted that there are no technical standrds currently in widespread use for the 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 Netherlands 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 should:

• Investigate the aspects of the questionnaire further (even with quite some initial research we had to leave gaps. I suspect other countries will have similar problems for sections of the forms.) as European politicians will (should) be interested in the results.
• Establish contacts with relevant (comparable ?) institutions in the following fields of cultural heritage: archaeology, monuments, archives, libraries, performing arts, folk art/ethnology
• Establish contacts with comparable institutes in the field of natural heritage. At least in The Netherlands the type of organizational structure of the field is similar to the museum field: utterly dispersed and smaller and larger organizations that complement and compete with each other...
• Establish long term contacts with other international museum information bodies (we all know the list).
• All these contacts should result in a report that makes a thorough description and analysis of the structures and action possibilities of these fields.

In summary, EMII should find a way to establish itself as a thorough, up to date, well known and reliable source of information on its area of action, bridging the fields of technology and politics on one side and museums on the other: "the place from where a museum would start off any serious plans it has to embark on when creating, using or exchanging information on its collections and/or theme".

¦ 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