Museer och kunskap : En informationsvetenskaplig studie av svenska museer

Sammanfattning: What are Swedish museums talking about, when they are talking about knowledge? Museums are often referred to as knowledge- or memory institutions, and at the core of most museums are the collections. Museum objects are documents or information carriers in their own right, but what is equally important, if not more important, is the knowledge and information about the objects and collections. This kind of knowledge may even expand over time as new knowledge might be added, for example through research. The fact that museum objects can be exhibited in different ways over time, and can be made to tell many different stories, is in a sense also adding to the accumulated knowledge connected to a specific object or collection. Evaluating existing knowledge, developing new knowledge and making that knowledge available both to employees, researchers and the public, is an important part of what a museum does. The Swedish museum act SFS 2017:563 also emphasizes the importance of knowledge in many of its paragraphs. From an information science perspective it is therefore of interest to look more closely at what Swedish museums talk about, when they talk about knowledge. Even though knowledge is a common word, being able to define it is a first step towards being able to organize and manage it more efficiently. Something that seems to be increasingly important in the context of the so called knowledge society, where knowledge is seen as a central asset for organizations, and instant access to knowledge is expected by the public. A questionnaire was used to gather information about the concept of knowledge in the context of Swedish museums and the answers gives insight into what the museums are talking about when they are talking about knowledge. New museum theory and knowledge management acts as a theoretical framework and as a tool for analysing the answers from the questionnaire and to give context to the research. One thing the analysis shows is that most museums don’t have a definition of the word knowledge to guide them in their work.