ABSTRACT
This history of computing in museums is the history of the application of computing technologies to the work of museum professionals beginning with the work done by curators and registrars in the mid-to late 1960s. This chapter describes work that is largely about the manipulation of museum information—for the purposes of tracking and identifying objects in museums of all kinds, for cataloguing and displaying this information, for accessing information about objects, and for interpreting and telling the stories of the objects in museums. The history of museum computing is not about the development of computing machinery but is the story of how many museum professionals were able to think beyond the constraints of the day and use computing machines and emerging technologies in the service of the museum field.
