Abstract
As cultural institutions libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) share the mission to organize information objects, artifacts, and data for user access and enlightenment. While (LAMs) may follow different metadata standards and procedures to manage their collections and each type of institution has unique information organization and service concerns, digital technologies have enabled them to create, organize, preserve, and provide access to digital collections for global audience. Increasingly LAMs are converging in their information organization and management effort (LAM entries in Hangingtogether.org; Zorich, Waibel & Erway 2008), and the cultural silos created by libraries, archives, and museums are being integrated or rendered transparent for users (Calhoun 2006; Christenson and Tennant 2005; Uzwyshyn 2007). The proposed panel is designed to examine the convergence of information organization practices of libraries, archives, and museums; explore collaboration opportunities; and discuss the implications of LAM information organization practices for educating information professionals for these cultural heritage institutions.
The panel consists of five speakers who will cover (1) the use of a faceted classification to organize museum artifacts and support website development; (2) metadata design and applications for organizing and preserving information objects for several types of cultural institutions; (3) the development of the Biodiversity Heritage Library and the involvement of libraries and non‐library specialists in this effort; (4) analysis of descriptive standards used by cultural organizations and areas where libraries, archives, and museums can collaborate; and (5) collaboration among cultural institutions, especially in the technology area.