nbsp;http://www.rin.ac.uk/objects
The Research Information Network report Discovering objects: Meeting researchers’ needs investigates how researchers discover and gain access to physical objects and artefacts using four varied subject disciplines as examples of the process: archaeology, art history, earth sciences, and social and economic history.
Many museums face increasing difficulties in providing the levels of support for research and scholarship that some of them did in the past. But the report shows that there is great scope for developing collaboration between museums, galleries and the research community, which would bring benefits to both.
The report finds that researchers want access to online finding aids to enable them to plan their visits to museums and collections, so that they can both see and handle the objects, and that contact with curatorial staff is of critical importance. The evidence gathered shows that most researchers are unaware of the online catalogues that currently exist or are being developed and feel that that there is a lack of consistency and transparency in the arrangements that museums make for researchers’ direct access to objects. However, their most important wish is that online access to museum databases to be provided as quickly as possible, even if the records are imperfect or incomplete.