Robert Martin, director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, argues that the distinctions between libraries, archives, and museums have always been ambiguous he describes the work of Paul Otlet, one of the founders of the documentation movement, who in the 1930s redefined the term “document” to include a wide range of objects and artifacts. Otlet claimed that documents were simply objects that conveyed information and thus the term could refer to anything collected by archives, museums, or libraries. The digital environment has further eroded these distinctions. As libraries, museums, and archives increasingly make their materials available online in formats that include sound, images, and multimedia, as well as text, it no longer makes sense to distinguish them on the basis of the objects they collect.
Marlene Manoff. “Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines. ”
Portal : Libraries And The Academy 4.1 (2004): 9-25.
