Given WhatsOldNew 2010

What’s Old Is New Again: The Reconvergence of Libraries, Archives, and Museums in the
Digital Age
Author(s): Lisa M. Given and Lianne McTavish
Source: The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy , Vol. 80, No. 1 (January
2010), pp. 7-32
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/648461
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THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY
Volume 80 JANUARY 2010 Number 1
WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN: THE RECONVERGENCE OF

LIBRARIES, ARCHIVES, AND MUSEUMS IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Lisa M. Given1 and Lianne McTavish2
As cultural institutions begin to share physical and human resources, and as new
technologies reshape approaches to access and preservation, educational programs
must respond in kind. However, it is important to ask in what ways the current
convergence of libraries, archives, and museums marks a return to tradition rather
than a departure from it. Are new technologies and curricula leading these three
fields of study and practice into new territory, or do they represent new stages in
an ongoing history of acquisition, documentation, representation, and access to
the enduring knowledge of our communities? This article examines the historic
convergence between these institutions, with a focus on museums and libraries as
repositories of cultural artifacts. The long-standing epistemological links between
libraries and museums are explored using archival records and examining two
contemporary cases, pointing to the reconvergence of a traditional shared history.
Introduction
In 2004 the Parliament of Canada merged the National Archives of Canada

with the National Library, creating an entity called Library and Archives
Canada (LAC). According to Librarian and Archivist of Canada, Ian E.
Wilson, this integration was ground breaking because it established a “new
1. Associate professor, School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta, 3-

20 Rutherford South, University of Alberta, Edmonton AB, Canada T6G 2J4; Telephone
780-492-2033; Fax 780-492-2430; E-mail [email protected].
2. Professor, Department of Art and Design, University of Alberta, 3-98 Fine Arts Building,
University of Alberta, Edmonton AB, Canada T6G 2C9; Telephone 780-492-3016; E-mail
[email protected].
[Library Quarterly, vol. 80, no. 1, pp. 7–32]

䉷 2010 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0024-2519/2010/8001-0001$10.00

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8 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY
kind of knowledge institution” designed to preserve Canadian heritage by

combining the functions of archives, libraries, and museums [1]. The staff
at LAC collect, preserve, document, and make available to a diverse public
such items as government records, books, family papers, newspapers, mu-
sic, film, maps, photographs, documentary art, and painted portraits. Wil-
son insists that Canada is the first country to integrate these objects and
services. Yet, is this convergence of institutions truly novel? How can the
wide appeal and increasing adoption of such comprehensive knowledge
institutions be understood?
This article approaches these questions about the present situation by
looking both to the past and the future. From the shared goals of infor-
mation organizations in the nineteenth century through today’s digital
environment—where Web 2.0 and other technologies are reshaping users’
experiences of cultural organizations—we consider how the current state
of these institutions constitutes points of reconvergence rather than an
exclusively new phenomenon. During the nineteenth century, libraries,
museums, and archives could overlap in terms of their political function
and physical space. As recent scholarship in critical museum theory has
indicated, elite patrons in England, the United States, and Canada regularly
grouped these institutions together, arguing that they could both elevate
and educate the “lower” classes while providing cities with visible signs of
civilization [2–4]. Wealthy benefactors typically established all three or-
ganizations at the same time, collecting books, documents, and specimens
according to such categories as natural or local history. More significant
than this temporal and spatial convergence, however, is the epistemological
foundation that enabled it. What theories of knowledge underpinned the
expansive institutions? How did the directors of the institutions understand
learning to occur? What were their educational goals, and who did they
imagine as ideally suited to convey information to the public?
These more specific questions are best answered with a case study
method that avoids generalizing about the diverse history of libraries, ar-
chives, and museums. One primary object of study here is the Museum of
the Natural History Society of New Brunswick. Established in Saint John
in 1862, it collected an array of specimens and books until the 1930s, when
it became part of the New Brunswick Museum. Numerous archival sources
document how the founders of this early Canadian institution understood
what we would now call the transfer of knowledge. The educational pro-
gramming developed by the Natural History Society of New Brunswick
received acclaim, augmenting its position within an international web of
similar organizations. Despite some unique features, this museum/library
is comparable to many other natural history museums equipped with li-
braries, including those in Montreal, Winnipeg, and Vancouver, as well as
to American establishments such as the Newark Museum, founded in 1909

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RECONVERGENCE IN THE DIGITAL AGE 9
as part of the public library by John Cotton Dana. The following historical
discussion of these connected institutions focuses on the links between
museums and libraries by shedding light on current forms of their con-
vergence, particularly the theories of knowledge and learning that inform
them.
Today, many digital repositories and portals reflect the reconvergence
of libraries, museums, and archives as institutions with common mandates
for preservation and access. The recent reunion of these types of orga-
nizations is driven by a number of factors, including demands from gov-
ernment funding agencies that museums and archives not focus exclusively
on the accumulation and classification of objects but instead serve a wider
public by making information more available. Administrators of museums
and archives have responded in part by digitizing collections and docu-
ments, circulating their holdings in a manner akin to libraries. Not every-
one favors this shift to the digital landscape, however, arguing that the
materiality of collections is being lost as information is homogenized and
simplified for public consumption [5, pp. 13–14]. At the same time, as
cultural institutions begin to share physical and human resources, and as
new technologies reshape approaches to access and preservation, educa-
tional programs are responding in kind (e.g., the iSchools movement in
the United States—see http://www.ischools.org/oc/). Yet most archivists,
librarians, and museologists continue to pursue separate degrees of study
with very little curricular overlap, where a critical examination of issues
related to digitization as well as theories of information and knowledge
exchange across the cultural sectors might best be explored. In the spirit
of promoting such dialogue, this article combines the insights of a scholar
trained in critical museum theory with one specializing in library and
information science theory, providing a unique perspective on the insti-
tutional and pedagogical transformation of library, archive, and museum
studies.
Ways of Knowing in Early Institutions
When forty-three men—including business owners, customs officials, and

teachers—founded the Natural History Society of New Brunswick in 1862,
they immediately created a museum collection designed to “illustrate the
Natural History of this Province, and so far as possible, of other countries”
[6]. By 1864 the museum contained 10,000 minerals and fossils, 2,000
marine invertebrates, 750 insects, 500 plants, and 30 stuffed birds, in ad-
dition to sundry exotic artifacts and aboriginal implements [7, p. 5]. Ac-
cording to early members, the collection and display of these objects con-
tributed both generally to the dissemination of useful knowledge and

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specifically to the promotion of New Brunswick’s natural resources, es-

pecially its mineral wealth. This conflation of museums and industrial ex-
pansion was commonplace during the Victorian era, when exhibitions were
meant to develop the economy as well as the mind [8, pp. 36–42; 9]. Largely
inspired by a British model, natural history societies sprang up across Can-
ada and the United States during the nineteenth century, producing ru-
dimentary natural history museums in many towns and cities long before
the establishment of art galleries. Proponents of such societies claimed
that nature study was an appropriate social pastime, which in addition to
economic rewards provided spiritual and physical benefits to participants
[10].
The collections in Saint John, donated by participants in the Natural
History Society as well as traveling missionaries and ships’ captains, must
have resembled an early modern “cabinet of curiosities,” overwhelming
viewers with their abundance and diversity [11, 12]. Members of the society
organized the rapidly expanding collections very slowly, for even in 1899
they called for volunteers to identify the geological specimens, which re-
mained almost entirely unlabeled [13]. A report of 1896 recommended
that the foreign birds scattered throughout the shell, mammal, and geo-
logical rooms be more appropriately displayed with the domestic birds in
the lecture room, alongside a stuffed caribou too large to fit elsewhere
[14, p. 153]. Members of the society held, however, that this random ar-
rangement did not undermine the value of viewing the collection. Like
many nineteenth-century North American museums, the Museum of the
Natural History Society was fueled by what historian Steven Conn calls
“naked eye science,” a practice affirming the significance of the close ob-
servation of specimens [15, pp. 32–73]. Louis Agassiz, the Swiss-born foun-
der of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology in 1859, for example,
regularly gave his students a small pickled fish, instructing them to scru-
tinize it for days, without immediately resorting to books [16]. Proponents
of natural history collections in Saint John and elsewhere similarly held
that when people looked intensively at material objects they gained access
to information that books could not provide.
Yet, members of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick did not
disdain written texts; they had created a library to complement the mu-
seum. A range of historical and scientific books and pamphlets could be
signed out by members of the society or used on site by the general public.
These printed collections were acquired through purchase, donation, and
exchange. The latter method proved especially effective once members
began publishing the Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick,
a scholarly journal launched in 1882 and traded for the publications of
similar organizations around the world, including many in Europe, the

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United States, Russia, and Australia [17]. This emphasis on the circulation
of information had an impact on the society’s educational programming,
for by 1894 members of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick
began sending mineral samples, fossils, and stuffed birds to public schools
throughout the province (see fig. 1). In 1908 the museum’s curator, Wil-
liam MacIntosh, began including written notes with each specimen, out-
lining its history and significance [17, pp. 561–62]. Emphasis on the com-
plementary nature of looking and reading also increased within the
exhibition spaces. In 1907, MacIntosh embarked on a more thorough
reorganization of the collections, mounting the shells on black tablets so
that “every specimen can be seen, and the label at the front of each tablet
easily read” [18, p. 59].
When a group of male anglophone physicians and educators created
the Natural History Society of Montreal in 1827, it also formed a museum/
library meant to educate local inhabitants. In addition to books about
geology, mineralogy, entomology, and botany, the society’s early collections
included stuffed mammals and birds, as well as fish and insects preserved
in spirits. According to the early members of the Natural History Society
of Montreal, written records and material objects were mutually depen-
dent, illustrating each other. Scientific books ensured that specimens did
not remain mere objects of curiosity, while the descriptions in books could
be compared with “authentic specimens” by those scholars and amateurs
striving to attain an expansive understanding of the natural world [19].
In the early 1900s Oliver C. Farrington, Curator of Geology at the Field
Museum of Natural History in Chicago, reinforced this approach to the
pursuit of knowledge, reporting that “the museum illustrates the objects
of which the library tells; the library describes the objects which the mu-
seum exhibits” [20, p. 80].
This complementary understanding of reading and looking was not un-
usual, extending beyond natural history societies to other kinds of mu-
seums and the broader educational system in North America. In 1887,
Luigi Palma di Cesnola, the first director of the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York, argued that museums were in effect libraries of objects,
offering “what the books do not and cannot supply” on their own [21, pp.
52–53]. The notion that material objects could be “read” like books, even
though they were ultimately distinct from printed sources, was also en-
couraged by various nineteenth-century educators, including Alexander
H. MacKay, the Nova Scotia editor of the Educational Review. In an article
from 1887, he urged teachers to have students dissect cocoons in the
classroom, attending to their color and texture in a way that would sup-
plement deficient science textbooks [22]. According to him and other
pedagogues, a full understanding of the natural world could be gleaned

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106.208.91.135 on Mon, 20 May 2024 10:02:30 +00:00
Fig. 1.—Louis Merritt Harrison, Genevieve Thorne, and Gloria Roulson in the School Service Department, 1944, New Brunswick Museum, an
educational loan service begun in 1894 by the Natural History Society of New Brunswick. Courtesy of the New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, NB
(1989-83-1208).
only by engaging in both the close visual observation of specimens and

attentive reading of written texts: the two activities would be inadequate
without each other.
The combination of objects and books was nevertheless not always suc-
cessful in practical terms. When the Historical and Scientific Society of
Manitoba was founded in Winnipeg in 1879, its goals were “to collect and
maintain a general library of scientific and popular literature, also to em-
body, arrange and preserve a library of books, pamphlets, maps, manu-
scripts, prints, papers and paintings; a museum of minerals, archaeological
curiosities, and objects; . . . to rescue from oblivion the memories of the
early missionaries, fur-traders, explorers and settlers . . . and to obtain
and preserve [their] narratives in print, manuscripts, or otherwise” [23].
As this ambitious mandate indicates, the Winnipeg society had a particular
emphasis on collecting archival documents in addition to natural history
specimens and books. The underfunded Historical and Scientific Society
of Manitoba sought to acquire government support for these pursuits by
agreeing to operate a circulating library and public reading room in ex-
change for free accommodations and an annual payment of $600 [24].
This official obligation quickly became burdensome to the society, and the
annual report of 1887 noted that it was difficult to maintain a large and
popular library—by 1892 it housed some 10,000 volumes devoted to lit-
erature, science, and history—while simultaneously caring for material ob-
jects [25]. The society’s museum collections were pushed to one side,
housed in hallways and stairwells, as the demands for library resources
increased. After steady decline, the Historical and Scientific Society of
Manitoba essentially collapsed around 1910, unable to attract members
more interested in studying specimens and archival records than in man-
aging a public library. In any case, the society’s services were no longer
required, for a new public library, funded by American industrialist and
philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, had opened in 1905, and it did not in-
clude spaces for either museum displays or the storage of archival records
[26, 27].
This brief discussion of the public library in Winnipeg alludes to the
way in which books could take precedence over collections of material
objects, becoming a government priority. A similar preference was evident
in Saint John as early as 1897, when the members of the Natural History
Society of New Brunswick strove in vain to have their natural history col-
lections included in a public library building proposed for the city [28].
This building did not actually materialize until 1904, when an impressive
red-brick structure was created with funding from Carnegie, who between
1886 and 1917 spent over $56 million to construct 2,509 libraries through-
out the English-speaking world, including 156 in Canada [29, p. 22]. Li-
braries had existed in North America before this time but had tended to

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be private, lending books only to those with paid subscriptions. In his survey
of American libraries built before 1876, Haynes McMullen argues that the
Harvard College Library, formed in 1638, was among the earliest organized
collection of books on the east coast [30, p. 15]. Public libraries expanded
in the eastern United States during the 1880s, but purpose-built library
buildings were still a rarity in the west. The situation was similar in Canada,
with uneven library development across the country. It was not always easy
for smaller towns to accept Carnegie’s offer to finance a public library,
however, for he required that recipient localities provide both a site for
the building and continuing revenue to fund its maintenance and staffing
[31, p. 260]. Although in 1904 the local government in Saint John promised
to meet its financial obligation to the new library, it did not seriously
contemplate funding a public museum until the 1920s, finally donating
monies for the building that opened in 1934 but without committing on-
going support for its upkeep or staff salaries [32].
Though Carnegie claimed that he wished to promote the public pursuit
of self-education in free libraries, he also contributed to the profession-
alization of these institutions by financing new buildings. According to
historian Jacalyn Eddy, during the late nineteenth century, unique spaces
were linked with unique functions and thus with professionalization and
progress [33, p. 157]. Carnegie libraries were not standardized, however,
in terms of architectural plans, contents, or function [29, pp. 44–63]. The
Carnegie library constructed in Saint John excluded the collections of the
Natural History Society, and yet those of the Art, Historical and Scientific
Association were installed on the top story of the Carnegie Library in
Vancouver, which opened in 1903 (see fig. 2). In an agreement with city
officials, members of the association agreed to hand over their collection
of stuffed birds, minerals, aboriginal implements, and paintings to the city,
receiving in return meeting rooms and museum space within the Carnegie
building [34]. Although the crowded and diverse collections remained in
this location until Vancouver’s Centennial Museum was built in 1967, by
the 1920s the combination of museum and library functions had become
controversial. An article published in a local newspaper in 1924 declared
“Museum to be Ousted,” while members of the Art, Historical and Scientific
Association strategized to construct an independent museum building
[35]. Adequate space for the expanding library was one concern, but the
appropriateness of charging a fee to view material objects within the library
was also raised, especially when it was revealed that the Carnegie Corpo-
ration lacked any documentation attesting to its consent to the museum’s
presence in the Vancouver building [36]. This case provides one example
of the increasing conceptual separation of libraries from museums, a dis-
tinction also developed elsewhere. In 1924, Judson Jennings, then presi-
dent of the American Library Association (ALA), complained that libraries

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106.208.91.135 on Mon, 20 May 2024 10:02:30 +00:00
Fig. 2.—City Museum and Art Gallery, west from the curator’s desk, early 1940s, Vancouver, BC. Timms Photography. Courtesy of the City Archives
of Vancouver, Vancouver, BC.
were cluttered with objects extrinsic to library work. He claimed that “in
going about my own library, I have at different times found exhibits of
dolls, or embroidery, or bird houses or even a collection of dead birds”
[33, p. 166]. Jennings insisted that these “foreign” exhibitions be removed
from libraries, though members of natural history societies had long con-
sidered the objects he mentions to be complementary to the act of reading
books rather than a distraction from it.
At the same time, the roles of librarian and museum curator were being
more rigidly defined. During the nineteenth century, if these job titles
were used at all, they were conflated, especially in smaller institutions.
Members of the Natural History Society of Montreal referred to William
Hunter, the man employed in their museum between 1859 and 1871,
variously as caretaker, janitor, cabinet keeper, and curator [37]. His tasks
were correspondingly diverse and included taxidermy, mopping the floor,
cleaning the exhibition cases, and staffing the museum when it was open
to the public. Although William MacIntosh was consistently identified as
the curator of the Museum of the Natural History Society of New Bruns-
wick, like Hunter he was entirely self-trained, lacking formal education in
either natural history or museum work, and lived on site, caring for the
museum building as well as the collections inside it. MacIntosh met with
fund-raising committees, operated the magic lantern during lectures,
greeted museum visitors, executed secretarial work, organized archival re-
cords, purchased coal to heat the museum, repaired the roof of its storage
shed, and ordered supplies for the annual camping trips [32, p. 81]. He
was also responsible for the society’s library, although during the 1880s
and 1890s young women were hired to assist with this task, subject to his
supervision. In addition to cataloging and organizing the book collections,
these women were asked to care for the objects and cases in the museum,
showing visitors through the exhibitions [38]. Their labor was clearly un-
differentiated and “unprofessional,” relying on general skills learned on
the job rather than university training or specialization.
After ceasing to fund library buildings in 1917, the Carnegie Corporation
of New York—founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1911—focused on library
education, a policy change initiated by Henry Pritchett, executive of the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching [31, p. 259]. He
commissioned a survey of libraries in 1916, which resulted in a report
calling for trained and efficient librarians. According to historian Barbara
Brand, the small library schools that prepared women to work in Carnegie
libraries were ignored, with attention paid to reforming the fifteen “pro-
fessional” library schools then active in the United States [31, p. 261]. The
Carnegie report insisted that only instructors with adequate experience
and college degrees should teach in these programs, accepting students
who were already college graduates. This emphasis on credentials accords

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with sociological descriptions of professional work, which typically features

specialized knowledge, systematic training that leads to credentials, dis-
tinctive hierarchies that delegate power to those at the upper levels, and
organizations that control who is allowed to work, usually by evaluating
training programs and assessing performance [39, 40]. According to the
Carnegie report, a proper librarian would acquire a broad knowledge and
professional attitude, with such practical work as filing, indexing, and type-
writing allocated to female high school graduates trained in the classes
offered by large libraries. This hierarchical plan was meant, Brand argues,
to counteract the feminization of library work by raising its intellectual
status and attracting more men into the field [31, p. 263]. The gendered
nature of librarianship is a subject of much discussion and debate in the
literature on library history, with some scholars discussing attempts to “mas-
culinize” library work and others producing accounts of how influential
library women both conformed to and resisted these efforts [40–44].
When the Carnegie Corporation turned its attention to museum work
during the 1920s, it continued to emphasize professionalization rather than
buildings; this was a move that Andrew Carnegie, who had died in 1919,
might not have supported [31, p. 260]. British scholars Sir Henry Miers
and Sydney Markham conducted museum surveys in numerous countries,
including Canada. Their 1932 report ranked Canadian museums among
the worst in North America because of inadequate financial support and
poorly trained personnel [45]. Carnegie Corporation president Frederick
Keppel then formed the Canadian Museums Committee to provide advice
about the disbursement of funds for gallery development and museum
training. In 1936 the members of this committee—predominantly white
businessmen—declared that “the urgent need in Canada is for the creation
of an adequately trained Art Gallery and Museum personnel to replace,
as opportunity permits, the casual, amateur and volunteer assistance with
which most museum work in the Dominion is carried out” [46]. Since
there were as yet no museum schools in Canada (and very few in the
United States), members of the Canadian Museums Committee gave both
travel grants and fellowships to aspiring museum workers already equipped
with university degrees, a move in line with the Carnegie Corporation’s
approach to professionalizing library staff [47].
The Canadian Museums Committee funded numerous individuals be-
tween 1933 and 1938 but had a particular impact on the staff of the New
Brunswick Museum. This provincial institution was formed in 1929 when
various museums in Saint John, including the Museum of the Natural
History Society, were amalgamated. Members of the Natural History Society
remained influential enough to insist on filling positions on the board and
to have its curator, William MacIntosh, appointed director of the New
Brunswick Museum. As indicated previously, however, MacIntosh lacked

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college training in either natural history or museum work. Dr. John Clar-
ence Webster, a wealthy patron of the New Brunswick Museum and Chair
of the Canadian Museums Committee, immediately sought Carnegie funds
to replace MacIntosh, selecting the historian Dr. Alfred Bailey, a recent
graduate from the University of Toronto [32, p. 86]. MacIntosh disap-
proved, however, of Bailey’s high level of education, complaining that a
PhD was of no use in a museum because “a person holding that degree
would not roll up his sleeves and get down on his hands and knees and
perform [the] manual labour required of the position” [48]. The older
director clearly aligned museum work with a kind of hands-on physical
effort at odds with Webster’s insistence on the intellectual work, catalog
writing, and scholarly research to be performed by his protégé, Bailey.
Recalling the division of academic from practical work already occurring
in libraries, the situation at the New Brunswick Museum was additionally
informed by debates about the preferable forms of masculine behavior
and labor to be performed within museums.
The professionalization of museums occurred rather slowly in Canada,
and Webster’s efforts to introduce Bailey faced opposition from the mem-
bers of the Natural History Society still on the museum’s board. In keeping
with the nineteenth-century definition of natural history that had infused
this society, nature was an organic unity of all living things, available for
study by generalists equipped with a keen eye and an enterprising spirit.
Following a particularly Baconian approach, members of the Natural His-
tory Society had focused on the inventory and description of nature, be-
lieving that the observation of a wide range of specimens could educate
the average person, rendering university training unnecessary [49, p. 3;
50, p. 10]. Respect for such knowledge gained by field work or practical
training had generally declined in North America by the late 1890s. Ac-
cording to historian Robert E. Kohler, most nineteenth-century curators
of American natural history museums were amateur collectors without
formal credentials. He calculates that only two of the eleven men hired
by the American Museum between 1871 and 1892 had college degrees.
That same institution hired, however, nineteen curators between 1895 and
1915: ten of them had doctorates and only one was without academic
certification [51]. Kohler attributes this rather sudden change—evident at
a range of other American institutions—partially to the increasing number
of trained biologists produced by universities but mostly to the growing
social status of academic credentials and their ability to define modern,
elite occupations while excluding the “lower” orders as well as many women
from them.
Women were funded nevertheless by the Canadian Museums Committee,
and one grant recipient, Edith Hudson, was hired in 1941 as curator of
the Art Department at the New Brunswick Museum. According to historian

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Kathleen D. McCarthy, women finally began to be hired as official cura-

torial staff in major American museums by 1930, but “they remained at
lower occupational rungs and in areas such as textiles, which decorative
art societies had claimed as particularly ‘feminine’ terrain” [52, p. 144].
Hudson’s employment at the New Brunswick Museum followed this pat-
tern, and she resigned in 1945 citing sexist treatment [53]. She was nev-
ertheless an ideally “professional” applicant, for, in addition to her BA and
MA degrees, she had successfully applied for funding from the Canadian
Museums Committee, undertaking research for ten weeks at the National
Gallery of Canada in 1936 and surveying museums and historic sites in
France, Germany, and England in 1939 [54]. All the same, her supporter
at the New Brunswick Museum, Alice Lusk-Webster—the wealthy wife of
Dr. John Clarence Webster—felt that Hudson lacked a crucial element:
hands-on museum experience. She thus enrolled Hudson in the appren-
ticeship program at the Newark Museum. Lusk-Webster provided a rather
weak defense of this program, explaining that she had “set aside my own
objections to Newark, for I know no place where contact with the public
is so intimate, or where instruction is given to children in such an ele-
mentary form, and believe that doing odd jobs in a one horse museum,
is just what she [i.e., Hudson] needs to counteract her academic tendencies
and fit her to meet our requirements” [55]. Lusk-Webster seems to have
associated the Newark Museum with the kind of menial labor liable to take
Hudson down a peg, preparing her for work at the relatively small and
underfunded New Brunswick Museum.
Begun in 1925 by the museum’s founder, John Cotton Dana, the ap-
prenticeship program strove to equip an intelligent work force with an
array of practical skills that could drive conservative experts—such as cu-
rators of European oil paintings—out of museums. As a public librarian
for forty years, Dana had pioneered the open stack system, while advocating
comfortable library spaces that would welcome the public [56]. After being
appointed head of the Newark Public Library in 1902, Dana conceived of
a museum created along the lines of a library, with loan collections and
exhibitions geared toward the needs and demands of the local population
[57; 39, pp. 93–96]. He launched the Newark Museum within the same
building as the Newark Library, creating industrial exhibitions—including
one on the development of bathtub design—in a deliberate rejection of
what he considered the “gloom” of elitist institutions. With the appren-
ticeship program, Dana and his associates continued to avoid specialization
by having the apprentices work in each department, receiving a salary of
fifty dollars per week in return. The apprentices followed an eight-month
program, beginning their training in the public library connected with the
Newark Museum before undertaking between two and five weeks’ of prac-
tical work in the education, registration, exhibitions, and science depart-

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ments, as well as lessons in typewriting and personal comportment [58].

Instead of dividing museum staff into expert curators and those who per-
formed unskilled labor, such as guards, Dana’s program was meant to
create a new kind of practical worker situated somewhere in between. The
founder of the Newark Museum and his followers argued that the most
useful and important kind of museum worker would “no longer [be] iso-
lated from the everyday life, no longer existing chiefly for the pleasure
and enlightenment of the student and the initiated” [59, p. 4].
The dual training undertaken by Hudson was informed by contested
visions of museum professionals. One vision, supported by Dana and his
followers, affirmed that museum workers should possess the practical skills
required to produce diverse exhibitions that served the public instead of
showcasing elitist knowledge. The other, supported by the members of the
Canadian Museums Committee, involved training students with university
degrees to undertake specialized museum research so that they could be-
come curators and directors. Dana’s vision was overtly associated with
women, both in terms of actual enrollment and in the descriptions released
by the Newark Museum. Archival records indicate that between 1925 and
1941 the apprenticeship program enrolled 217 students: 204 of them were
women, and only 13 were men [60]. There are a number of explanations
for this distinction, related to the gendered divisions of work and identity
during the first half of the twentieth century. Dana’s program envisioned
the ideal museum worker as flexible and practical, dedicated to serving
the public and educating children as well as adults, roles then socially
coded as feminine. Official publications released by the Newark Museum
explicitly recognized that the apprenticeship program would appeal more
to women than men, arguing that a man would want to specialize and
make a name for himself, whereas a woman was “like Lord Bacon,” taking
“all knowledge for her province” [61, p. 17]. This reference to the Baconian
approach invokes the expansive kind of learning identified with natural
history during the nineteenth century and thus recalls the kind of “ama-
teur” worker (such as William MacIntosh) that members of the Canadian
Museums Committee wished to displace from museums. Although Dana
and his followers praised the service-minded female staff member as more
important than a museum expert, their understanding of the ideal worker
reinforced gendered distinctions of labor, recalling the image of the female
librarian assistant as a skilled typist who interacted well with the public.
In the end, the vision of the Canadian Museums Corporation dominated,
with expert curators considered essential museum staff by the 1970s in
major institutions. Scholars are increasingly criticizing the elitism of mu-
seums, however, and are embracing Dana’s vision of an accessible insti-
tution committed to the dissemination of useful knowledge [62]. Practi-

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tioners of critical museum studies continue to debate the appropriate

function of curators—should they instruct or should they serve the pub-
lic?—a discussion underpinned by the considerations of professional status
outlined above [63; 3, pp. 138–47]. The renewed debate is also informed
by assumptions about how knowledge is gleaned and who is most capable
of producing it. Both John Clarence Webster and Alice Lusk-Webster ul-
timately viewed the museum as a repository of culture, staffed by highly
educated professionals able to elevate the well meaning but uncultivated
population of New Brunswick [64, 65]. As this image of the museum and
its function shifts, it is increasingly identified with public service and the
provision of access to diverse forms of information, taking the form of a
dialogue rather than a lesson. In various ways, the museum is becoming
more like a public library, potentially returning to the emphasis on self-
education and the circulation of information promoted by members of
the Natural History Society of New Brunswick.
Is the library also becoming more like a museum, embracing multiple
forms of knowledge acquisition in ways that do not subordinate material
artifacts and hands-on learning to written sources? The case study outlined
previously suggests reasons why libraries became more firmly separated
from museums during the twentieth century, including government fund-
ing priorities and the kind of professionalization that increased the status
and profile of institutions even as it sought to exclude those “amateurs”
who had long contributed as volunteers and staff members. Attending to
the history and power dynamics of this process enables new questions to
be asked of the current reconvergence of libraries and museums: Is the
focus on a user-oriented definition of these institutions based on traditional
understandings of knowledge acquisition, or is it exclusively fueled by new
technologies and budget cuts? What are the spatial politics of recently
recombined organizations? Do the professionals working within them fear
that current challenges to hierarchies and disciplinary distinctions threaten
their identity and status? Have new forms of division been created as a
compensatory mechanism? Do unstated concerns about the “feminization”
of all library and museum work inform discussions of these modern knowl-
edge institutions? Do they inform the continued divisions between the
educational programs designed to produce librarians, archivists, and mu-
seum workers? Perhaps an entirely new kind of professional will result
from the reconvergence of libraries, museums, and archives, but at this
point the answers to most of these questions remain open; some responses
can nevertheless be gleaned by taking a closer look at a selection of con-
temporary institutions and the educational programs that now produce
information specialists.

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Convergence in Practice—Libraries, Archives, and Museums

in the Digital Age
What is the current state of modern librarianship and its ties to museums,
archives, and other cultural institutions? All of these fields are grappling
with recent innovations in technology, including Web 2.0 technologies that
allow users to engage with these institutions via social networking sites,
blogs, wikis, and other mechanisms, to faster platforms and less expensive
user tools (e.g., handheld devices) that allow individuals to access a range
of multimedia resources from around the world. Indeed, institutions world-
wide are engaged in large-scale initiatives to digitize cultural artifacts and
make these available to the general public—often within a funding envi-
ronment that promotes restraint and competition between competing or-
ganizations. At the University of Alberta, for example, the Ukrainian Folk-
lore Archives is housed in Museums and Collections Services [66], while
the Alberta Folklore and Local History Collection is housed in the Uni-
versity of Alberta Libraries [67]. The lines between libraries, museums,
archives, and related organizations have become blurred in the last decade,
particularly in the eyes of citizens who may be unfamiliar with the divided
territory that has come to shape traditional approaches to gathering and
providing access to cultural materials. Also, organizations faced with re-
ductions in government funding (at a time when new technologies for
gathering and providing access to materials demand increased human and
fiscal resources) are finding new ways to work together toward a common
goal. Library and Archives Canada, for example, now “collects and pre-
serves Canada’s documentary heritage, and makes it accessible to all Ca-
nadians. This heritage includes publications, archival records, sound and
audio-visual materials, photographs, artworks, and electronic documents
such as websites” [68]. As indicated previously, LAC was created in 2004
by joining the National Library of Canada and National Archives of Canada
under one administrative and physical home. Despite the fact that the
word “museums” was not captured in the earlier or current name of this
organization, many of LAC’s materials and practices include those found
in museum environments. The legislative act that created LAC mentions
museum materials explicitly [69], and LAC’s descriptions of itself as “a
new kind of knowledge institution” notes the inclusion of a “museum
mandate” for this organization [70].
Although the formal mandate of LAC and the conceptual vision of a
single entity that is charged with collecting and providing access to a coun-
try’s cultural heritage under one roof may be attractive to government and
citizens alike, the educational divisions between these related, yet struc-
turally separate, fields of study may well be the most challenging aspect of
LAC’s future successes. While the LAC Web site refers to the new organ-

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ization as being able to remove “arbitrary boundaries” [70] between the

former institutions, these divisions are anything but arbitrary for the faculty
and professionals teaching and working in these fields. As long as librarians,
archivists, and museologists (not to mention other information profes-
sionals) continue to be educated in isolation from one another—for ex-
ample, with few standards that cross disciplinary boundaries in terms of
organization, preservations, and user access—real boundaries to collection,
management, and access of materials will remain.
How are educational programs responding to the current evolution of
physical and digital spaces that provide access to various forms of knowl-
edge? A review of educational preparation for the various information
professions reveals a general divergence and separation between these
fields of study, despite the overlapping imperative to collect, manage, and
provide access to various forms of cultural and knowledge production. The
ALA, for example, remains the primary gatekeeper for formal preparation
of professional librarians, through its sixty-two accredited programs (at
fifty-seven institutions in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico) [71].
The ALA’s Web site references a number of “career paths” for “librarians”
but makes no reference to curators, museologists, archivists, or other in-
formation professionals; although ALA does not explicitly exclude muse-
ums and archives (and defines the field covered by accreditation in very
broad terms), it is notable that none of the accredited programs specializes
exclusively in museum or archival studies [72]. The list of ALA-accredited
programs reveals a broader diversity of program names (e.g., Master of
Library and Information Studies, Master of Information Science, Master
of Arts, Master of Science), although these programs must adhere to the
Standards for Accreditation of Master’s Programs in Library and Information Sci-
ence in order to be given the ALA’s “accreditation” designation. Although
some LIS programs offer courses in archives, records management, and
related areas, only one school on the ALA’s Web site includes archival
studies in its name (i.e., University of British Columbia’s School of Library,
Archival and Information Studies), with only the University of Wiscon-
sin–Madison offering a formal specialization in archives and records man-
agement [73].
Individuals interested in museum or archival studies, then, must look
elsewhere for educational programs—and without the benefit of an ac-
credited system to point the way to programs that reflect a standardized
curriculum. In Canada, the Canadian Museums Association provides pro-
gram details on their Web site [74]. Unlike LIS programs (where the
master’s degree is the entry designation for the profession), museum stud-
ies programs are available at the certificate, bachelor’s, and graduate levels
(e.g., Technician in Museology, Museum Management and Curatorship
Program, Arts Management Program). In the United States, museum stud-

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ies programs are offered at dozens of institutions at the graduate level

[75], and undergraduate and certificate programs are also available. Many
of these programs cross a number of disciplinary boundaries (e.g., Du-
quesne University’s graduate-level Archival, Museum and Editing Studies
program), while others are embedded in established fine arts, education,
anthropology, or related programs (e.g., University of St. Thomas’s master’s
program in art history). The Society of American Archivists (SAA) provides
“Guidelines for a Graduate Program in Archival Studies” on its Web site,
where it notes that “archival education programs have traditionally been
established in both history and library science environments . . . [while]
other programs may emphasize interdisciplinary studies that link, for ex-
ample, library, archival, and museum professionals” [76]. Librarianship is
listed as being a key, allied profession, with archival programs including
very distinct curricular intentions and points of focus. Similarly, and with
specific reference to library and museum contexts, the SAA notes that
“archivists and archives work in cooperation with other professions and
institutions such as libraries and museums to preserve and provide access
to cultural memory and to ensure accountability. Students should under-
stand the interrelationship among archives and other keepers of cultural
heritage, and the ways in which records contribute to that heritage.” Like
ALA, the SAA provides a directory of programs on its Web site for graduate,
bachelor, and certificate programs available in the United States (twenty-
two) and Canada (two) [77]. As with museum studies, however, many of
these degrees and certificates are cross-disciplinary with an archival stream
(e.g., Master of History; Master of Arts in Public History) or embedded in
a Master of Library and Information Studies program, rather than a stand-
alone program in archival studies.
The embedded nature of archival and museum studies within Library
and Information Studies programs (even at the level of a single course) is
not a new phenomenon; indeed, LIS schools have often included some
attention to these allied professions in explorations of LIS theory and prac-
tice. Although this has not been done yet in any systematic way, the evolution
of “LIS” to “IS”—with a focus on information science as the overriding
umbrella concept for various approaches for collecting, managing, and pro-
viding access to material culture—demonstrates great potential for a more
complete convergence at the educational program level. Indeed, such a
convergence may best reflect and address the convergence of these infor-
mation practices in society, particularly given those new technologies that
allow people to access a range of materials for different purposes.
The “iSchools” movement, although still in its infancy, provides one
example of the potential for a reconvergence of libraries, museums, and
archives in educational contexts. However, it is also worth noting that the
movement has been critiqued heavily by many LIS scholars, given the rules

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and fees involved for membership; the predominantly male leaders within
the organization (combined with a focus on those areas of the field that
are more closely allied with computing and other “masculinized” activities)
draw an interesting—and very troubling—parallel to the gender divisions
that shaped the professionalization debates discussed previously. Unfor-
tunately, the often vocal critics at conferences in the field have not yet
explored these issues in the published LIS literature, making this an area
that is ripe for further investigation from a feminist perspective. In addi-
tion, as libraries, museums, and archives move to digital preservation and
access to materials, it will be interesting to see if the iSchools also embrace
humanities disciplines (such as art history) alongside the focus on com-
puting technologies.
What the iSchools do offer at present, however, is a consistent theory
of knowledge not based on distinctions between objects but based on their
complementarity, in keeping with nineteenth-century ideals. The first con-
ference of the iSchools (the formal name for the group) was held in
September 2005, at the School of Information Sciences and Technology
at Penn State University. The iSchools movement was created by a number
of deans in the United States who joined forces to promote awareness of
the information field as represented by various, related programs. The
movement has its own charter document, membership committee, and
regular conference, reflecting its interest in “the relationship between in-
formation, technology, and people [that] is characterized by a commitment
to learning and understanding the role of information in human endeav-
ours” [78]. Although a review of the current list of member iSchools reflects
a clear focus on library and information science and computing ends of
the spectrum of information-related programs, there appears to be space
for archival and museum studies under the information-related “umbrella”
represented by this group [79]. The description of this interdisciplinary
and interprofessional field of study notes that “the iSchools take it as given
that expertise in all forms of information is required for progress in science,
business, education, and culture. This expertise must include understand-
ing of the uses and users of information, as well as information technologies
and their applications” [78]. The iSchools Web site encourages students
to consider studying at an iSchool, as this field of study “empowers people
in all other fields to create, find, store, manipulate, and share information
in useful forms” [80]. Interestingly, this (and most other definitions of
information found in the LIS literature) is reminiscent of the Baconian
approach to learning discussed previously, where “all knowledge” can be
subsumed, to some degree, within an expansive view of individual en-
gagement with learning and sources of information.
In spring 2006, a special section of the ASIST Bulletin (edited by Glynn
Harmon) documented some of the key issues explored at this conference

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and that inform the movement itself. As ASIST Bulletin’s editor Irene Taylor
notes, “the I-Schools view themselves not as a new science trying to find
a home, but as institutions providing a home to a wide variety of information-
related disciplines in the hope of improving the synergy, collaboration and
identification of the information field” [81]. In their reflections on the
conference experience, Anthony Debons and Glynn Harmon remark on
the cross-disciplinary and cross-professional nature of the conference; they
note the inclusion of perspectives from such fields as “computer science,
information science, library science, telecommunications, information
technology, management information systems, informatics, instructional
technology, software engineering, computer engineering, archives and oth-
ers. Attendees also brought forth their respective orientations from the
humanities and social and natural sciences” [82]. The purposes of the
conference were to
1) explore and develop the essential foundations of the information
field;
2) identify some of the grand challenges faced by society and the
iSchools;
3) explore disciplinary and administrative relations between iSchools
and the university;
4) search for common themes related to iSchools identity; and,
5) explore possible transformations, impacts, and opportunities
ahead. [83]
John Leslie King, in his article “Identity in the I-School Movement,”
described the movement in this way: “The I-School Movement is made up
of novel academic programs that embrace new intellectual and professional
challenges in a world awash in information. I-Schools move beyond tra-
ditional programs, while building on the intellectual and institutional leg-
acies of these programs. I-Schools straddle the academy’s ancient engage-
ment with information and the contemporary challenges of ubiquitous
information affecting all aspects of society” [84].
Conclusions
While the iSchools reflect a very exclusive, American-focused movement

(i.e., with only one Canadian member to date), there is great potential
here to create a new educational coalition among the information-related
fields that can embrace the full spectrum of information-focused profes-
sions and programs. Although the current members focus, most promi-
nently, on the computing and information science realms of the field, the
other end of the spectrum—as represented by library, museum, and ar-

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chival studies, as well as related humanities and social sciences disciplines—

is needed to present a balanced glimpse of the information field that the
iSchools purport to represent. Unfortunately, a number of structural re-
quirements in the iSchools charter (e.g., US$10,000 annual membership
fees; representation by deans, rather than directors/chairs) may prevent
this body from achieving its dream of building an inclusive home for allied
disciplines within the information field. What the iSchools movement does
achieve, however, is an open space for dialogue among and between in-
formation-related programs and professions; it recognizes the interplay of
technology, culture, education, and people and presents a clarion call for
joining together to move educational programs with similar mandates and
goals further into the twenty-first century. Museums, archives, and libraries
need to be involved in these discussions in active, productive ways, or they
risk isolation and extinction in the face of modern technologies and fiscal
restraints; this can be achieved by a conscious reconvergence of mandates
and goals, to exploit traditional and modern areas of expertise, and to
work together to connect people with the artifacts of culture.
However, it is also important to note that such a convergence at the
“school” level must also be considered in light of the historic context
regarding the role of gender in shaping the evolution of libraries, mu-
seums, and archives. Christine Pawley, for example, explores the mas-
culine voices that sit on either side of the “professional/libraries” and
“researcher/information science” spectrum that has shaped the “con-
tested terrain” of LIS for many decades [85]. As technology shapes prac-
tice in LIS (and other allied professions), are core services shifting from
what was once the purview of a nurturing, female profession, to that of a
male, technologically focused domain? Is information science (in the words
of Ellen Crosby) simply “librarianship practiced by men” [86], or is there
space here for a new “gender convergence” in the digital age? Are the
educational programs that shape our fields concerned with service to the
public, with science and rationality, and do they differ from those that
shaped the earlier arguments about professionalization? Are these new
programs creating content experts or public servants or a new breed of
information professional for the twenty-first century? Is part of the current
lack of convergence in educational programs related to issues of profes-
sionalization and even masculinization, as discussed previously in light of
historic perspectives on these issues? These questions have not yet been
adequately addressed in the current educational literature; however, con-
siderations of gender politics and the implications for curricular design
(as well as for professional practice) must be examined in more detail.
On the practice side, libraries, museums, and archives must also join
forces to effectively claim their shared territories in the digital environ-
ment. Users typically do not draw the same lines in the sand that profes-

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sionals tend to draw around their educational and practice-oriented bound-

aries. Although the three professions reflect quite different mandates at a
micro level (e.g., user-focused library collections vs. archival preservation),
these organizations share a vital wealth of knowledge and care for cultural
heritage at a macro level. As digitization projects move forward, as gov-
ernment funding becomes increasingly competitive, and as individual cit-
izens harness the power of Web 2.0 technologies to engage with cultural
organizations in new ways, librarians, archivists, and museologists—what-
ever they choose to label themselves—must work together toward a com-
mon curriculum and common baseline of expert knowledge to gather,
manage, and make accessible the vast array of materials in the coming
centuries. By respecting and acknowledging our shared history and by
using that history as a springboard for reenergizing the convergence of
the information professions, we can ensure a vibrant future for our cultural
materials and the ways our citizens can engage in that history.
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What’s Old Is New Again: The Reconvergence of Libraries, Archives, and Museums in the

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WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN: THE RECONVERGENCE OF

Lisa M. Given1 and Lianne McTavish2

In 2004 the Parliament of Canada merged the National Archives of Canada

1. Associate professor, School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta, 3-

[Library Quarterly, vol. 80, no. 1, pp. 7–32]

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kind of knowledge institution” designed to preserve Canadian heritage by

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Ways of Knowing in Early Institutions

When forty-three men—including business owners, customs officials, and

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specifically to the promotion of New Brunswick’s natural resources, es-

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only by engaging in both the close visual observation of specimens and

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with sociological descriptions of professional work, which typically features

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Kathleen D. McCarthy, women finally began to be hired as official cura-

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ments, as well as lessons in typewriting and personal comportment [58].

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tioners of critical museum studies continue to debate the appropriate

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Convergence in Practice—Libraries, Archives, and Museums

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ization as being able to remove “arbitrary boundaries” [70] between the

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ies programs are offered at dozens of institutions at the graduate level

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While the iSchools reflect a very exclusive, American-focused movement

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chival studies, as well as related humanities and social sciences disciplines—

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sionals tend to draw around their educational and practice-oriented bound-

1. Wilson, Ian E. “Biographical Notes.” 2008. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/about-us/

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