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Vitrine Review

Reading museums through their images

Archive Histories

Archive Histories

Tracing how museum image collections were assembled, catalogued, and made accessible over time.

All entries

4

2026

  1. A wooden cabinet with rows of glass lantern slides and handwritten index cards in a museum archive room

    AH-2026.09

    How did museum slide libraries begin?

    How museums built centralized slide and photo archives for research, teaching, and documentation before digital access.

  2. A librarian comparing printed cataloguing manuals beside a computer screen showing a metadata record form

    AH-2026.09

    When did image cataloguing standards change?

    A historical look at how museum image cataloguing shifted from local systems to shared metadata standards.

  3. A large format camera on a tripod pointed at a marble sculpture in a museum gallery with natural light

    AH-2026.09

    Early Photographic Surveys of Collections

    How systematic photographic campaigns documented museum and archival holdings, shaping research, provenance study, and access.

  4. A researcher scrolling through a digital image database on a tablet next to a microfiche reader in a library

    AH-2026.09

    Microfiche to Digital in Museum Image Research

    How the shift from microfiche to digital databases reshaped access, discovery and research practice in museum image collections.