Key Concepts of Museology - ICOM

FOREWORD
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lead to increasing discrepancies in museum job specifi cations and
training courses across different cultures. In this context, a reference
tool for museum professionals and students of museology is allthe-more
essential. Where the ICOM/UNESCO publication Running
a Museum: A Practical Handbook provided museum practitioners with
a basic handbook on current museum practice, the Encyclopaedia
Dictionarium should be regarded as a companion piece, providing a
complementary perspective on the theory of museums.
While the challenges of day-to-day work often overwhelm the
ability of the museum fi eld to stop and think about its fundamental
philosophical bases, there is a growing need for functionaries at all
levels to rise to the challenge of bringing clarity and comprehension
to those who question the relevance of the museum to society and
its citizens. ICOFOM’s crucial work as encapsulated in the Encyclopaedic
Dictionary provides for a cogent, structured deconstruction
and distillation of the core precepts underpinning our work today.
Although the Dictionary presents a predominantly Francophone vision
of museology for reasons of linguistic coherence, the terminologies
synthesised herein are comprehended and/or utilised by museologists
in several different cultures. The publication, while not exhaustive,
synthesises decades of knowledge development in a systematic investigation
of both the epistemology and etymology of the museum and
offers an in-depth presentation of the primary concepts in Museology
today, with an elegantly pragmatic view of both the historical
redundancies and current contentions, which invest in the growth and
expansion of the profession. ICOFOM, the Dictionary’s editors and its
authors have consistently brought sensibility, perception, rigour and
balance to this task of ‘defi ning’ and explaining the institution and
the practice.
As an avant première of the complete Encyclopaedic Dictionary,
this brochure has been designed to give access to the widest public
possible, in the context both historical and current, for the derivation
and evolution of the various terms that litter the language today. In
the spirit of ICOM’s policy of embracing diversity and promoting
greater inclusion, ICOM anticipates that like the ICOM Code of Ethics