Museum curators led development of the discipline of anthropology in the late nineteenth century, and at the same time developed foundational systems for cataloguing cultural materials. Although entering and accessing catalogue information now relies on keyboards rather than inkwells, the earliest systems continue to influence our understanding of objects. Among the most influential of the early systems was that of the Smithsonian's United States National Museum (USNM), with its first anthropological catalogue entry dating to 1859. Analysis of the material culture of the ubiquitous catalogue books of American museums both before and after the establishment of the USNM system reveals its wide and lasting impact. This system normalized certain fields as essential and disciplined data accordingly, resisting alternate ideas about information offered by donors and by later developments in anthropology. While many museums have now moved through successive generations of information management systems, the effect of early data choices has seldom been examined.

中文翻译：

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物质联系：人类学编目中的“史密森效应”

博物馆馆长在 19 世纪后期引领了人类学学科的发展，同时发展了对文化材料进行编目的基础系统。虽然现在输入和访问目录信息依赖于键盘而不是墨水瓶，但最早的系统继续影响我们对物体的理解。早期系统中最具影响力的是史密森尼的美国国家博物馆 (USNM)，其第一个人类学目录可追溯到 1859 年。 美国博物馆建立前后无处不在的目录书籍的物质文化分析USNM 系统的变化揭示了其广泛而持久的影响。该系统相应地将某些领域规范化为必要和规范的数据，抵制有关捐助者提供的信息以及后来人类学发展的替代想法。虽然现在许多博物馆已经经历了连续几代的信息管理系统，但很少有人研究早期数据选择的影响。