1991:2 - Universitetet i Bergen

technology for various purposes. Onc applicatian concerns the museum's
collections of objccts. 1 million objecu wcre registercd in grotocoIs or
on cards, and thc registered objects wcre safely skored away in depok:
in pracrice inarcessible to borh scsearch~rs and museum personneI. By
updating thc catnlogues on computer, and storing pictures of the objects
on vidco disks. khe museum has created an effective organisational tool,
as wc11 as a good source of information for sesearch.
As an exampIe of a multimedia information system. the author points
to the National Museum's product on the Danish Liberation SLsuggIe
1940-45. which consists of 11,000 phatographs and nine video sequences
stored on a video disk, and a computer control system to guide the
vicwcr to exactly the material of choice. This video disk has bccn on
the market for more han a year, and is sold to a number of schools
in Scandinavia and ta rcsertrch institutions in mmy parts of the world.
People have objected to sorne of the iniormatien presetned, and actually
corrected the "official" vcrsions of the evenrs.
Thc RoyJ Library in Copenhagcn is planning a national picture
database in cooperation with Danmarks Radio: the purpose is lo register
and make accessibIc large colIections of pictures - about 10,000,000
ilerns - which at present are diBicult to access: they are found in just
one Iocadon, Slolsholmen, and can be viewed only during opening
hours and under ~hs auspices of a museum consultant. An average of
60,000 such visitors are guided through relevant collections every year,
which naturally drawc heavily on the resources of the museum. Besidcs,
searching, in this case rneans Icafing through the miginals, provided
they are available and registered.
In this situation a database of digitized pictures stored on same
opticaI storage medium will faciIitate easy access, quick and ellicient
searches - and geography is no hindrance.
The thitd case is kaken from Telccorn Denmark in Tåstrup. which is
developing a database OF historical picturcs showing the developmcnt
of teIe-communications in Denmark.
These cases share cornmon concems for conservation, disaeminntion,
technology and ecanomy.
New technology rnay definitdy reduce the wear and kar on the
original pholographic material through the creation of compupter registess
with digjlized copies. Some kind of permanent siorage for rhe original
material will sti11 have to be round.
Dissemination is very weI1 catered for by the new technology: it
may givc the museum personne1 a new, complete overview over the
colIecLions, and visitors rnay freely search the entire picture base.
Technology: Ar present data bases of high-soIution data bases are
very expensive. The best solutions seem to be centtal information data
HUMANISIISKE DATA 2:91 IS5