Since 1992, ICOM has co-ordinated a series of projects to encourage the development of museums in Africa. One element of this AFRICOM initiative is a project for the Standardization of Collection Inventories in Africa. A Working Group made up of curators from six African countries, the ICOM Secretariat and advisors from CIDOC have developed the project. This paper outlines CIDOC's contribution to the work.

The objectives of the AFRICOM Inventory Project were first identified at meetings titled What Museums for Africa? Heritage in the Future, held in 1991 in Benin, Ghana and Togo. The participants of the subsequent Accra workshop also considered problems faced by African museums due to the lack of an effective methodology for inventorying collections. These meetings led to a resolution (International Council of Museums, 1995) which recommended that:

• each African museum should undertake a systematic inventory of its collections;
• this inventory should be recorded on standardized forms used by all the museums of the continent. Technical assistance, coordination and monitoring of this programme by concerned international organizations such as ICOM, ICCROM and WAMP is desirable;
• this manual inventory should serve as a basis for the computerization of museographic documentation and should include collections outside the country.

ICOM responded to these proposals by establishing the project, the first phase of which ran from 1992-95. The co-ordination of the Working Group has been provided by the ICOM Secretariat (particularly Valérie Chieze).

Six museums were selected to work on establishing standards for African collections inventories:

• Musée National du Mali
• National Museum of Namibia
• National Museums of Kenya
• Musée National du Bardo (Tunisia)
• Musée d'art et d'archéologie de l'Université d'Antananarivo (Madagascar)
• Institut des Musées nationaux of Zaire.

CIDOC was invited to provide professional advice to the project, with the core contributors being Dominique Piot Morin and myself. Since her election as Chair, Jeanne Hogenboom has also been involved, including attending the 1995 meeting of the overall AFRICOM Co-ordinating Committee. In addition, a number of the representatives of the six museums are active CIDOC members.

The main development work has been carried out during a series of intensive week-long meetings, held in Paris (July 1993), Nairobi, Kenya (July 1994) and Antananarivo, Madagascar (November 1995).

The first meeting provided an opportunity to review the documentation experience and expectations of the six museums and other participants from a number of European museums with African ethnographic collections. We identified a preliminary set of fields, with a particular emphasis on the inventory of African ethnographic collections. Existing CIDOC standards provided a basis for these fields, together with the practice in the pilot museums. Following the meeting, the fields were defined in a first draft Handbook of standards, copies of which were circulated to the pilot museums.

In the following year, the museums evaluated the effectiveness of the fields by using them as a basis for records about a sub-set of their collections. In a number of cases, these records were then computerised, using computers provided as part of the project. Valérie Chieze, Dominique Piot Morin and I carried advisory visits to the pilot museums, to review their documentation practice and assess the effectiveness of the draft fields. These visits were very useful in giving us a better understanding of the needs of the museums.

At the second meeting, we were able to analyse the results of the recording and computerisation, with demonstrations of the progress that had been made. This led to a reappraisal of the first draft set of fields and the preparation of fuller recording and terminology guidelines. The outcome of this work was published as the second edition of the Handbook of standards, the printed version of which was circulated to all African museums for wider discussion. In addition, the English-language text was used as the basis for a Web version, demonstrated at the 1995 ICOM Triennial Conference in Stavanger, Norway (International Council of Museums, 1995).

The evaluation and reappraisal process continued at the 1995 meeting, where we made further revisions to the fields and particularly to the definitions and term lists. The third edition of the Handbook of standards resulting from this work was circulated to museums in mid 1996.
This gives guidance on:

• documentation practice;
• computerisation principles and practice;
• the fields to use for a primary inventory and a fuller catalogue of a collection;
• recording and terminology guidelines for the use of these fields.

The drafts of the Handbook have been applied in the six museums and more widely within their countries and region. The museums have also carried out preliminary training in the use of the guidelines.

The focus of the project for 1995-96 includes:

• publicise and develop awareness of the Handbook;
• evaluate the effectiveness of the Handbook;
• continue and report on the introduction of regional training programmes based on the Handbook;
• identify the need for additional fields and recording and terminology guidelines;
• continue the development of terminology lists.

At the 1995 meeting, it was agreed to meet again in Kenya in September 1996, to continue the development of the standards and promote their implementation in museums across the continent. This meeting will be immediately before the CIDOC conference. It is hoped that the members of the Working Group will be able to attend the CIDOC conference, enabling them to contribute to the conference and benefit from discussions with participants from outside Africa.

A number of the members of the Inventory Working Group have become active users of the Internet during the course of the project and ICOM itself has identified the development of museum use of the Internet as a high priority. At the 1995 meeting of the overall AFRICOM Co-ordinating Committee (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, November 1995), it was agreed to set up an AFRICOM Internet Working Group to pursue the use of the Internet in African museums. The members of the Working Group are drawn from the Inventory project and are all active members of CIDOC (Joris Komen, Jean-Aimé Rakotoarisoa and Glyn Balkwill). They have been asked to implement Internet access for the Co-ordinating Committee and the six Inventory project museums.

Following the important progress achieved by the Inventory and Internet initiatives, the objectives of the 1996 CIDOC conference include:

• to provide a forum for African documentation specialists to present their work to the wider community;
• to provide a full report on the progress of the AFRICOM Inventory Project;
• to provide an opportunity for a continued dialogue between regular participants and for these participants to discuss their work with African colleagues;
• to promote the use of documentation standards and the Internet in the museum community;
• to discuss the research uses of networks and network resources;
• to discuss the documentation implications of the fight against illicit traffic;
• provide a series of training courses in documentation principles and practices.

It is planned that the AFRICOM Inventory Working Group and the CIDOC Standards Working Group will have a number of meetings during the Conference, so that the CIDOC participants will be in a position to present a peer review of the Handbook at the close of the meeting. This should be an important step in validating the AFRICOM work and demonstrating its value to the wider community.

It is also planned that a number of terminology specialists will attend both meetings and advise on the opportunities for developing uniform terminologies appropriate in the African context. Work on terminology is expected to provide a major focus for the Inventory project in 1997 and beyond.

The AFRICOM Internet Working Group will also give a full report on the progress of its work. There will be an emphasis on the potential of the Internet throughout the conference.

Finally, members of the AFRICOM Inventory Working Group will give training seminars on the use of the Handbook to colleagues from African museums and further afield. This will be another important opportunity to evaluate the success of the work among a peer group and the possibility of extending the work to other developing regions.

International Council of Museums (1995). AFRICOM Programme. Standardization of collections inventories in Africa. Handbook of Standards. 2nd version.
Paris: ICOM, January 1995.
Accessible through
http://icom.museum/africom/standards.html

Andrew Roberts
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