Museum Studies
Another area related to the digital humanities is museology or museum studies. The study of museums, their history, their functions in society, their activities (curation, preservation, public outreach, and pedagogy) are all components of museum studies. Scholarly activity in museum studies involves critical museology, focusing on critical engagement with museums, and carefully analyzing, criticizing, and questioning the fundamental preconceptions and assumptions of museums and museum studies. As a broad field, critical museology also investigates cultural heritage sites, art galleries, memorials, and other repositories of cultural artifacts. Museum studies also involves modes of exhibition. For instance, as discussed in subsequent sections, immersive and interactive environments, many of which employ virtual reality (computer simulated reality) and augmented reality (the superposition of virtual reality onto the material world) are used as exhibits or part of exhibits to convey intellectual and aesthetic experiences that would be difficult to achieve with static displays (Szabo, 2018). These environments are enabled by new computational and visualization capabilities. GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) institutions are among the public-facing aspects of the digital humanities, and therefore research into these institutions, and critical engagement with them and with their social, political, and technological practices, are important concerns in humanities scholarship.
