Tools for studying the collections at the musée du quai Branly: paper archives and electronic research

Extract

The musée du quai Branly, dedicated to the arts and civilisations of Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania, has been open since 20 June 2006. Its holdings came from two pre-existing museums, and also from a number of new acquisitions. The museum’s library conserves and enhances the value of three heritage collections – the documents in the library itself, those in the drawings, engravings and photographs collection and the archive pieces and documents about the collections – and a miscellany of users is welcomed to its three dedicated research spaces, from museum visitors to internationally renowned scholars. An ambitious policy has led it to define and develop tools for consulting the collections, and to create a virtual collection in the form of a documentary web portal, through which the museum diffuses its research and heritage documents on the internet. The archives and the collections documentation described below perfectly illustrate how this works.