Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

How can a museum represent diverse Asia? How does the museum provide its extensive information more widely and effectively to the users? These are the author’s questions about the ‘Library Park’ of the Asian Culture Center in Korea. This study uses the Asian Culture Center as an example to study how its exhibition ‘Library Park’ reproduces Asia. Through organizing official publications, interviewing curatorial teams, and analyzing exhibition content, it explains how the exhibitions reproduce Asia and provide users with information. The Library Park is a new type of knowledge and information space called ‘Larchiveum’ that integrates the functions of libraries, archives and museums. The project space of Library Park had professional researchers from all over Asia presenting thirteen Asian themed topics such as exhibition histories, migration, sound, and music, etc. in different forms. The study found that it uses archives as a display method, displaying a collection of topic-related materials, and setting up a digital archive to integrate scattered data across Asia. In addition, through the juxtaposition of exhibitions and books, Library Park can make it more diverse and complement the various Asian issues that cannot be transmitted in the exhibition. It also allows the user to actively participate in the information acquisition process. These extensive and diverse exhibition characteristics enable users to build understanding of Asia from different perspectives.