As part of my PhD literature review on museums and technology I am attempting to define some terminology.

Take Museum for example.  How do you define it?

The most widely used definition is that by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) who define a museum as:

 “a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.”

ICOM state that this definition has evolved continuously in relation to changes in society, even opting to try and overhaul it in the early 2000’s but realistically it hasn’t fundamentally changed since it was first adopted in 1974.

I have two main gripes about the ICOM definition. Firstly the words permanent institution. What is that in this day and age? It automatically suggests a physical presence, and doesn’t take into consideration the fluidity of museums, or any mention of a digital presence.  Does a museum have to have to be a real building in order for it to be a museum?  The Nationaal Historisch Museum of the Netherlands doesn’t have a building  therefore it cannot be a museum? I think not. Also Jasper Visser has a great post on what a museum is, or can be.

The second main gripe is of including the activity of acquisition. Many museums due to the political nightmare of funding cuts no longer have an active acquisition policy.  Does this mean that they are no longer viable museums?

You can also define museums by size, shape, collection, funding, management the list is endless. But as definitions are supposed to state what a word means, rather than describe an institution or activity how do you go about stating what a museum is, when the answer is so diverse? Is there such a thing as a generic museum?

So after pondering this definition for a while, I did what any self respecting Digital Humanist would do and asked Twitter : How do you define a museum?

It’s interesting how many people went for the ‘building’ as attempt to define and others plumped for the ICOM definition. I like how ingrained responses become from what we have been taught previously. I quite like thinking of museums as big grand buildings containing secrets and knowledge and excitement. But is that what a definition should be, a nostalgic memory of building that stole my imagination as a child (and continues to do), should it really be defined as such, when there are so many more modern developments to consider? Then there are the more personal responses, considering emotions and feelings. But what was really interesting is that no one on Twitter really came up with a definitive decision on what a definition of a museum should be. Let alone taking into consideration the more digital elements or the participatory ones. I do think we need a new definition, but as of yet I’m not quite sure what that might be.

Really we have the power to define and redefine the meaning of a museum willy nilly, to suit our purposes. Is it really right to have a generic ‘official’ definition at all? In reality, shouldn’t we let the public who use/visit/experience museums to do the defining?