Metadata and the way of encoding of the collections in Shaanxi History Museum

The contemporary advancement of digital museum studies has emerged as a significant subfield within the broader discipline of museum studies and is poised to have a profound influence on the future trajectory of museology. The Shaanxi History Museum is a provincial museum located in Shaanxi, China. It has the distinction of being the first national museum in China to have contemporary facilities on a big scale. Situated in Xi'an, a city with a historical legacy spanning over a thousand years as the capital of thirteen dynasties, the location has a significant cultural and historical heritage, as well as abundant archaeological riches. This paper explores the qualities and limitations of metadata encoding in the context of the Shaanxi History Museum. It does so by analyzing the collection metadata from two perspectives: page search and collection data files. The study also suggests further encoding options about the collection circulation, museum data administration, and display requirements, considering the future trajectory of digitizing museum collections.