Communicating museum collections information online: Analysis of the philosophy of communication extending the constructivist approach

Cultural heritage institutions are spending considerable effort and resources in order to provide online access to their collection catalogues and collection management systems, usually through their institutional websites. This improves accessibility and supports research and engagement by diverse user groups, as well as meeting the increasing expectation by audiences that this type of information will be freely and easily available online. However, cultural organisations have not responded to these needs in the same way and have been employing different web tools and features to present their collections online. This technological implementation as well as the type of content provided reflects also the philosophy of communication of the institution itself. The paper describes the research carried out studying the provision of collections information online by different types of museums. The research, whose first phase started initially in 2007, involved studying a large number of museum collection catalogues on the web and comparing them with those in 2017 in order to establish categories of presentation types and analyse their corresponding philosophy of communication, as well as compare the changes over time