ABSTRACT
This contribution analyses museum documentation as a set of activities that are purposefully crafted. It illustrates the observation made by Star and Ruhleder that infrastructure is grown rather than built onto an existing installed base. The focus is on how the representations of objects are enhanced, playing a vital role in the production of knowledge within the museum context. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the National Museums in Berlin, this chapter reveals the evolution of cataloguing practices at the convergence of museum documentation systems, where infrastructural elements have the potential to merge or integrate with other tools or standardised systems. The chapter identifies and explores three main craftwork features of museum documentation: interconnected lines of work, the translation of know-how, and the value of “good hands.” It emphasises how incomplete index cards and digital catalogue entries, one after another, had left sufficient “reflection space” for everyday staff to contemplate aspects of repair, maintenance, improvisation, and how they could perform their job better.
