Abstract

The birth of museums in India has its origins in colonial rule. While the country today counts over 800 museums, proper collections management and its treatment as a pivotal museum function have not taken hold widely. Several challenges remain, including a lack of space, the scarcity and misallocation of funds, and, critically, an absence of national standards and guidelines for collections storage and management. While the Indian government created a digital repository in 2014 through an initiative called JATAN, the sector still trails behind in the fundamentals of collection storage and documentation, and in digitising collections. This article, drawing on responses from anonymous respondents to a specially designed questionnaire, examines inadequate storage practices in India, while also assessing the attitudes of Indian museum professionals towards collection storage over the last decade. Further, it sheds important light on the sharp divide between those who manage collections and those who curate in the subcontinent.

The article additionally offers a template for the development of a national policy for collection storage and usage: one that covers multiple concerns, from weather conditions and disasters to objects of sacred relevance (especially in palaces that exemplify living heritage). Taken together, these suggestions can serve to standardise practices across museums in India. This article also highlights a requirement for documentation guidelines and accessibility of collections for myriad uses—research, teaching and curation—across India and the world. Lastly, it explores the need for greater capacity building, given insufficient educational frameworks and a lack of formally taught museology courses. For this purpose, it discusses crucial national and international reports published over a decade and qualitative data gathered through primary interactions with professionals.

摘要

印度博物馆的诞生起源于殖民统治。虽然今天该国拥有 800 多家博​​物馆，但适当的藏品管理及其作为博物馆关键职能的处理并未得到广泛应用。仍然存在一些挑战，包括空间不足、资金稀缺和分配不当，以及关键的是缺乏收藏品存储和管理的国家标准和准则。虽然印度政府于 2014 年通过一项名为 JATAN 的计划创建了一个数字存储库，但该部门在馆藏存储和文档以及馆藏数字化的基础方面仍然落后。本文根据匿名受访者对专门设计的问卷的回答，研究了印度不适当的储存做法，同时还评估了过去十年印度博物馆专业人士对藏品存储的态度。此外，它揭示了管理藏品的人和在次大陆策展的人之间的巨大鸿沟。

这篇文章还为制定国家收藏品存储和使用政策提供了一个模板：一个涵盖多种问题的模板，从天气条件和灾害到与神圣相关的物品（尤其是体现活遗产的宫殿）。综上所述，这些建议有助于规范印度各博物馆的做法。本文还强调了对文档指南和馆藏可访问性的要求，以用于印度和世界各地的无数用途——研究、教学和策展。最后，鉴于教育框架不足和缺乏正式教授的博物馆学课程，它探讨了加强能力建设的必要性。以此目的，