CHeriCoS

The term "memory institutions" is used throughout many papers in the field of cultural heritage. But till now i couldn't find a reliable source of it. Although you can find this term mainly in publications from around the millenium nobody seems to provide any clear definition or source. It's interesting that till now there is even still no wikipedia article about "memory institution". In this blog post about memory institutions the author quotes an article by Lorcan Dempsey 1999. He claims that

"Archives, libraries and museums are memory institutions: they organise the European cultural and intellectual record. Their collections contain the memory of peoples, communities, institutions and individuals, the scientific and cultural heritage, and the products throughout time of our imagination, craft and learning.

He is quoted many times, but he doesn't provide any source of her definition. On the WWW you will sooner or later find a definition by Birger Hjørland, who says that

Memory institutions [...] are for example libraries, museums, archives, cultural heritage institutions like monuments and places, botanical gardens, zoological gardens and all kinds of "collecting institutions".

His definition is based on a paper his compatriot Roland Hjerppe published in the proceedings of the 3. ISKO-Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark 1994 under the title "A Framework for the Description of Generalized Documents". This source is also quoted several times. But this could hardly be the first definition of "memory institutions". I haven't got the time to dig deeper into this, but a quick google book search reveals much older sources. For example you can find this term in an article in "Opposition", a journal of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, in Issues 13-17 of 1978. The oldest use of this term I could find is in this report in 1972: Libraries and information technology: a national system challenge: a report to the Council on Library Resources. I guess some research will reveal even older usage. Meanwhile any additional hints are welcome.