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With the advent of AI and the challenges we face every day in the modern world, many people have come to believe in the decline of the humanities. As cheesy as it might seem, I would like to quote what Robin Williams, as John Keating in Dead Poets Society, says:

"[...] medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."

Although they are not often considered sciences themselves (even though they absolutely are, they simply don't deal with quantifiable data), the humanities are continuously discredited. Yet we keep studying them; we keep reading literature; we keep listening to music; we keep creating art; we keep dancing. Not only do they nourish the human soul, but they also provide the foundation for many scientific disciplines and teach humans how to be humans.

Talking about the much-debated future of the humanities, I would like to share this article (published online by Cambridge University Press, 2024), which addresses this exact question. The author believes in a future for the humanities, yet it is argued that they need to broaden their scope, engaging with some of the most pressing issues of our time (e.g. climate change). At the same time, this does not mean abandoning what makes the humanities so unique. On the contrary, they bring something that science and computers alone cannot provide: an understanding of human identity, empathy and values shared with society. Securing the Future of the Humanities|Public Humanitites| Cambridge Core 

This intervention has become urgent, as we live in a rapidly changing society. As stated before, the humanities are facing a crisis that threatens them, in order to prioritize what can be measured and monetized. Many humanities programs in universities are, in fact, being cut or reduced, especially because they appear to be difficult to justify in economic terms. The Guardian has dealt with this problem showing how many American universities are being managed according to a corporate model. These disciplines are not useless though. As discussed, they develop skills that are essential both for individuals and society: critical thinking, empathy, ethical values. The easy access we have to information today does not mean that we can easily evaluate it. I would argue that technology  has made humanities even more important: a machine can generate an answer but it cannot classify it as meaningful or ethical. In addition, if humanities scholars remain isolated within the academic world, it becomes easier for society to consider them disconnected from current matters. As a society, I believe we need to reinvent the humanities without losing their fundamental purpose.  "Just Not Monetizable": humanities programs face existential crisis at U.S. universities 

When talking about the Humanities, we often come across the terms library, archive and museum. Are we using them interchangeably to refer to places where we store human records? Or are we referring to something distinct?
Obviously, the fact that our language has three different terms immediately suggests that there must be something that differentiates them. Yet, don't they try to achieve the same goal? Do they collaborate?
The proximity between these institutions and the overlap of their boundaries are undeniable, especially with the advent of the digital age.

If we look them up in a dictionary we'll find: 

• library➡️a space that holds a collection of books and tools for people to borrow;

• museum➡️a building where objects of some particular interest are kept and displayed;

• archive➡️a collection of historical records/a computer file used to store electronic information.

In the context of cultural heritage, these three dimensions can be gathered together under the acronym (G)LAM, referring to those institutions that preserve and provide knowledge, serving education and accountability: G-galleries; L-libraries; A-archives; M-museums.
As previously mentioned, although they may have historically covered different, professional areas, in the digital age they are facing the same challenges to digitize their collections and to make their data more accessible and discoverable for a broader public.

To better understand their differences and similarities, we can take a look at the materials they offer. Traditionally, while libraries provide access to published and mass-produced items (often considered less unique) for distribution and consultation, archives primarily hold unpublished and rare documents. Museums, meanwhile, exhibit physical, valuable objects of historical, artistic or scientific significance. However, their categories are not mutually exclusive: archives can be found within museums, just as published materials can be held in archives and so forth.
The ways in which they use and describe their materials also vary as briefly mentioned above: libraries can facilitate access through catalogues, borrowing services and onsite consultation; archives often rely on finding aids and archival descriptions to help the audience navigate; museums provide access through exhibitions and educational activities.
This convergence can be illustrated by the terminology used in each field. Terms as cataloguing, processing, preservation, curation may be shared even if their meanings and application differ. Yet, the sharing process highlights the same concern with supporting memory, creativity and knowledge.
Also (and although they may overlap underlining the broader, common purpose of the three institutions) their audiences tend to get different names: visitors (for museums), researchers (for archives), patrons or readers (for libraries)

A recent article on the Backlog blog has also stated a variety of metadata standards used across these fields: libraries primarily use Resource Description and Access (RDA) and controlled vocabularies; archives commonly follow Describing Archives: A Content Standard and implement Encoded Archival Description; museums may rely on the guidelines outlined in Museums Registration Methods or adopt standards tailored to specific types of collections. All three also make use of the flexible Dublin Core metadata standard for digital projects. Although these standards have different structures, their use shows a shared need to describe and make the collections discoverable.

In conclusion, defining these institutions has never been straightforward. Each field keeps its own history and identity, but their methods and scopes often intersect. With the distribution of many documents over the Internet, digital resources have blurred the traditional boundaries that once distinguished them concretely, making their convergence not only a more visible process, but also an ongoing one. Rather than eliminating the differences among them, this convergence should focus on how close and complementary they are in the study of cultural heritage, digital humanities and much more.