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Thematic archive · Collectibles

Collectibles and the thrill of completing a series

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Contemporary

Digitisation Is Not Enough: The Context a Museum Must Preserve

A digital copy can broaden access to a collection, but it cannot by itself replace the documentation explaining what an object is, where it came from, and how it reached a museum. This editorial guide examines the value of metadata, archives, and digital narratives in preserving technology and material culture without losing meaning.

Contemporary

Everyday Life in the Museum: Why Context Is Preserved Too

Museum archives and collections do not only gather exceptional objects: they also make it possible to study everyday activities, customs, and relationships. Drawing on documented holdings in Spain and Latin America, this article examines what can be stated about that work and its limits.

Contemporary

When a Magazine Becomes an Archive: Comics Between Collection, Museum and Digital Access

Comics and magazines cease to be ephemeral materials when an institution, collection or digitisation project contextualises, describes and preserves them. Drawing on sources about the Museu del Còmic i la Il·lustració, public archives and digital-preservation studies, this article examines what can be verified about that transition.

1950s

Spanish Fashion as Document: From Garment to Fashion Illustration in Public Collections

Collections and exhibitions at the Museo del Traje and other institutions make it possible to read fashion as material culture: garments, accessories, photographs, magazines, patterns and fashion illustrations preserve traces of production, circulation and use. A tour of what these sources allow us to state—and what they do not—about Spanish fashion from the post-war years to the 1970s.

Contemporary

From Album to Archive: What Museology Can Teach a Sticker Collection

Stickers do not automatically have to become institutional heritage to deserve documentary attention. Drawing on Modena’s Museo della Figurina and basic principles of inventory, conservation and museum context, this analysis treats the album as a cultural source: a set of printed objects, themes, uses and memories in which the information matters as much as each item.