🚀 go-pugleaf

Museum Informatics Project <mip-arch@garnet.berkeley.edu> wrote:

>I like to say that museums are in the information business, to twist
>the minds of many who (still) think of museums as in the collections
>business. But, that aside, I think that both "sci" and "infosystems"
>are probably going to create lots of (negative) discussion among
>discussants, probably for some good reasons. ...

Why is "infosystems" a problem?  What reasons?  Can you suggest a
better term?  Perhaps it would be good to discuss with the readers,
even though many would object;  maybe someone will come up with
the perfect solution.


>Or, perhaps in *.collections.*.  Museums, libraries, archives, personal
>collections, are all kinds of collections ...

Libraries are moving away from being repositories of collections and
toward being information centers.  And I think so are museums;  it's
no longer enough to just collect stuff and put it on a shelf.

I too wish there were another major academic hierarchy beside sci.*.
Bit.* is the closest there is to one, and given trends in Usenet 
now, I think we're better off developing bit.* as that hierarchy,
rather than trying to create acad.* or something like it.  This
was precisely what I had in mind back in 1986 (!) when I asked the
person who was then maintainer of NETNEWS to build in a gateway
feature to couple LISTSERV mailing lists with Usenet newsgroups.
I think bit.* can be made into such a hierarchy if two things are
done:  (1) new newsgroups in bit.* but not in bit.listserv.* are
given constructive names, and (2) we begin using "mainstream"
Usenet procedures to create these newsgroups:  proposals, voting,
etc.  No. 1 is probably by far the more important step to take.

Is anyone relaying the pertinent parts of this discussion back to
the Museum-L readers?

-- 
	Una Smith			smith-una@yale.edu

Department of Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT  06520-8104  USA