hey Mike,

this really isn’t an either/or question.

and it’s a difficult one, as it cuts right to the heart of the challenge of identifying the ‘museum audience’. the reality is that there really isn’t one audience: there are many with different interests, and levels of subject and technical literacy.

one thing is clear, though. the research community *wants* access to museum collections information online. all of it. warts and all. for a recent UK-based articulation of this see “Discovering physical objects: Meeting researchers’ needs” at http://bit.ly/cfba9C

ideally, digital documentation about collections in its ‘raw’ form becomes the foundation for authored and interpretive features. it’s a fallacy to think that these are directly competing and interchangable approaches because they serve different user communities and needs.

/jennifer