Museum
A museum is distinguished by a collection of often unique objects that form the core of its activities, including exhibitions, education, and research. This differentiates it from an archive or library, where the contents may be more paper-based, replaceable, and less exhibition-oriented, or from a private collection of art formed by an individual, family, or institution that may grant no public access. A museum typically has a collecting policy for new acquisitions, ensuring that only objects of certain categories and qualities are accepted into the collection. The process by which an object is formally included in the collection is called accessioning, and each object is given a unique accession number.
Museum collections and archives are usually catalogued in a collection catalogue, traditionally in a card index, but now more commonly in a computerized database. Transferring collection catalogues to computer-based media is a major undertaking for most museums. All new acquisitions are generally catalogued on a computer in modern museums, but there is often a backlog of older catalogue entries waiting to be computerized as time and funding permit.
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