European Standards Map

Norway

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

Elin Harriet Wyller, Nowegian Museum Authority
Siv Bente Grongstad, Norwegian Museum Authority

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National Overview

There is no national definition of museum in Norway. However, they do refer to ICOM's definition:

"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"

The main objective for Norwegian museums, as defined by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs should be added to this:

"Museums shall create the foundation for knowledge about, understanding for and experience with nature, culture and society in such a way as to show both continuity and change, connection and diversity."

There is no single legislative act governing the activities of museums, however, university museums are treated under the law governing universities and regional archaeology museums are governed by the National Heritage Act. The Norwegian Museums Authority (NMA) is responsible for co-ordinating national museum documentation and information.

The respondents estimated that 50% (or less) of Norwegian museums currently comply with the ICOM Code of Professional Ethics. The NMA is currently collaborating with ICOM on a new translation that will be sent to all museums in 2000.

The total number of museums in Norway is estimated as 700 with collections totalling an estimated 24,000,000 objects. The ratio of public museums versus private owned and run museums is 670 to 30. In Norway a museum is considered public or private depending on its ownership.

Public museums can be defined as:

'all museums owned by the public, institutions and associations. Most of these receive public funding. '

And private museums as: 'owned by private individuals or private firms. '

Categories of Public Museums

Categories of Private Museums

Sources: "Museumsstatistikken 1998" ("Museums Statistics 1998") based on an annual survey using a standardised form "Statistikk for norske museer og samlinger" (Statistics for Norwegian museums and collections"). Also the Norwegian Museums Auhtority's own museums' database. Normally, approximately 70% of the total number of museums return a completed survey form. Therefore, the numbers do not reflect the total picture for museums in Norway. It has not been possible to estimate the number of objects held in the folowing categories: Regional, Local Authority, Company and Private Individuals therefore these figures are qualified as 'estimated'. Collections include photographs, the total number of held across the 25 national museums is 1,538,935. The total number held at the military museum is 36,000 and a further 457,349 are held across the 4 university museums.

Employment

There are 3404 people in full time employment in Norwegian museums. The number of part time employees is not recorded, however a figure for volunteers is given as 243 man-labour years.

Information Management

Percentage of cultural heritage held in Museums that is:

The Norwegian partner had difficulty in answering what percentage of cultural heritage is documented to a basic level and what is catalogued in detail. However, it is known that 275 museums record information digitally. National guidelines for documentation are available in the form of "Feltkatalog". It provides a description of standard data field definitions which the three main database systems in Norwegian museums - WinRegimus, Primus and Imago - are based on. The Norwegian partners were not able to answer what percentage of digital information is held in national, regional and insititutional databases.

Partners Comment: Not part of our data gathering in the Museums Statistics survey. This information, however, will most likely be provided in the survey for 2000. However, we have some data from the museums mentioned in section 1.2.1[Public Museums] in this EMII-survey. The figures are estimates: c70% of the collections in the 25 National museums are catalogued in detail and c30% are documented to basic level. c97% of the collections in the one Military museum are catalogued in detail and c3% to basic level. c65% of the collections in the 5 University museums are catalogued in detail and c35% to basic level.

Images and Multimedia

The partner was not able to answer how many museums have published CD-Roms or the total number of publications. Similarly they were not able to answer what percentage of museums have digitised all or part of their collections and for what purposes. They estimate that around 40 museums have interactive gallery systems.

Partners Comment: The NMA is currently working towards adjusting the infrastructure of Museumsnett so that Norwegian museums will be able to put their databases on-line with an adequate search module. Most museums see the benefits of "being on-line" with adequate information about their museums (opening hours, address, facilities, current exhibits etc) and are eager to digitize part of their collections to show the public what they can offer - the short-term objective being to increase their visitor numbers and thereby a source of income and also to satisfy government requirements that museums increase their accessibility. A longer term objective for museums is to increase cooperation with other research institutions in order to initiate research projects or continue or develop existing ones. Access to each other's collections and data is therefore important and the NMA sees an increasing amount of digitization projects within museums.

Museums and the Internet

341 museums have Intenet access for Web browsing and 241 have email. 168 have Web sites but it is not known what proportion are purely brochureware or include some educational content. As at 31March 2000 a total of 10 museums had databases online and a further 10 are planning to go on-line by December 2000. Beyond this there is little confirmed information available in Norway on this subject.

Of the 31 public museums mentioned above (25 National, 1 Military and 5 University museums) 10 are without a Web site. Of the 21 museums with their own Web site, 3 museums had brochureware only, 1 had educational content only, and 17 had both brochureware and educational content. Only the University museums have collection databases on-line. However, there are other regional initiatives for collection databases on-line (see below).

Partners Comment: In general, many museums in Norway are so small that they don't have the resources (either money or competent staff) to install computer hard- and software necessary to hook up to the Internet. In some cases, museums may have one computer for the entire museum with access to the Internet, but the research staff don't have their own access. There are, however, an increasing amount of museums that are gaining this access. In addition, the databases WinRegimus and Primus which are both developing their respective web-versions, and the webRegimus project already has test-data that includes: 9,209 recorded photographs from Nord-Troms Museum with c1,200 digitized photographs, c2,500 recorded objects, also from Nord-Troms Museum, no digital images, c11,000 recorded objects from Norsk Skogbruksmuseum (Norwegian Forestry Museum) with c7,000 digital images, 403 recorded photographs and digital images from Lofotmuseet.

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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

Partners Comment: One potential activity for the NMA is to translate the set of fact-sheets from CIDOC concerning registration, labelling and marking objects. The NMA is currently working on developing national collections management standards and may therefore decide not to translate them, but instead include them in our standards as an example of what CIDOC's recommendations are. The NMA is also working on developing standards for condition assessment of objects and photographs.

"Feltkatalogen" is a de facto standard used in around 250 for object registration. The three main database programs for object registration - WinRegimus, Primus and Imago - all are based on both this standard and the classification system "Outline of Cultural Materials".

We also asked what Collections Management Software is in use:

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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

The partner did not know of any term lists in use in Norwegian museums other than the ones developed and recommended by the NMA.

NMA Term Lists in use include:

• Nomenclature Drinking vessels ("Drikkestell") with an estimated 580 terms. in use in an estimated 50 museums including:
• Nomenclature Cutlery ("Bestikk") with an estimated 275 terms.
• Nomenclature Dairy Equipment ("Melkestell") with an estimated 1109 terms.
• Nomenclature Boxes and Chests ("Esker, Tiner og Skrin") with an estimated 131 terms.
• Museums' Handbook ("Museumshaandboka") from 1980 with an estimated 110 broad terms.

There are only two main systems of classification in use in Norway: a Norwegian translation of Outline of Cultural Materials and Iconclass. The Norwegian version of Outline contains 654 main categories and is use in approximately 275 museums. Details of an international initiative involving Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland to harmonise their respective translations of Outline are listed at Nordic Outline ("Nordisk Outline"). Iconclass is used in 12 museums for the cataloging of approximately 70,000 objects. Usage by significant collectons includes: Nasjonalgalleriet, Museum of Contemporary Art ("Museet for samtidskunst"), Oslo kommunale kunstsamlinger (Oslo municipal collection of art), Srlandet Kunstmuseum, Munchmuseum, Astrup Fearnley Museum.

No thesauri are known to be in use by Norwegian museums.

Content and Structure Description Standards

The NMA recommends that where museums develop their own database program that they incorporate the national standard for registration, i.e. Feltkatalogen, and the national standard classification system, i.e. Outline. The partner was not able to comment on the use of metadata standards in Norway.

Technological Standards and Protocols

The Norwegian partner was not able to answer the questions in relation to: data presentation and encoding standards, image format standards, searching distributed databases. They noted that the question of protection of intellectual property arises periodically but that no standard has been agreed on.

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Future Vision

The Norwegian 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.'

One of the main benefits from the EMII project, from the Norwegian Museum Authority's view, is that of networking, partnerships and joint projects either within research, information and collections management, or education. Furthermore, easier access to museums' collections on-line is another goal. Public access to collections in archives, libraries and museums is increasingly important as the demands for easier access to information and knowledge increase. EMII can provide us with knowledge of how museums in other countries treat problems of standards development, collections management and access to their collections. This in turn can be a motivating factor for both the NMA and museums in our country to encourage cooperation between museums. In our work with standards and documentation programs we already try to orient ourselves internationally in order to benefit from similar projects. To gain access worldwide it is important to collaborate with other institutions and gain knowledge of similiar work in other countries. Thus, EMII can also give more credibility and meaning to our work.

In the future, we would like to see the EMII Web site as a sort of extension of the Norwegian Museumsnet ("Museumsnett Norge"). Thus, EMII could be a gateway to information about European museums in all its facets. EMII could gather and organize information about:

• Museum education courses (both courses offered by museums themselves, museums' associations and universities)
• The archives, libraries and museums sector (for example joint projects)
• Funding possibilities both within European Commission programs and other external programs
• All other related European collaboration projects (there are so many and a survey/overview of these would be helpful)
• National and international projects within European museums
• Survey of how museums are organized in other European countries (i.e. the European "museum landscape" - this data can already partly be derived from the EMII Standards Survey)

In this way, EMII could provide links to other relevant sites and information and contribute to a more global network of cultural heritage institutions.

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

Created on 14 July 2000