Sober Thought Cultural Institutions

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The Cultural Institutions Chief Directorate of the Vice Ministry of Culture is the branch of the federal government of Sober Thought charged with preserving museums, libraries, archives and sites of national historical importance. It further subdivides these responsibilities into four directorates: Sober Thought Museums, Sober Thought Libraries, Sober Thought Archives and Sober Thought Historic Sites.

Sober Thought Museums

The federal government maintains a system of twenty or so full-fledged museums across the country to educate and entertain scholars, students, citizens and foreign visitors. They are thematically clustered below for convenience, although the boundaries are somewhat elastic. In addition, there are scores of small musuems or heritage centres located at #Sober Thought Historic Sites.

All museums proper have hands-on or kinetic exhibits (e.g., mock mine elevators, floating model boats, working minature railways, performance stages), large static artifacts (e.g., whole airplanes, real tanks, dinosaur skeletons, mining equipment), small static artifacts (e.g., postage samps, sheet music, toys, fishing gear), supporting documentation (e.g., diary extracts, nautical maps, car manuals, newspaper clippings) and interpretive assistance (e.g., live docents, audiovisual displays, exhibit catalogues, artifact signage).

The directorate as a whole operateson a cost recovery basis the Sober Thought Museums Service for private and provincial museums. The director may offer qualifying provincial museums grants or low-cost loans, but more likely in-kind contributions or subsidised travelling exhibitions of national artifacts.


Museum governance

Each individual museum, named for the field(s) of endeavour it strives to depict, is governed by a board of directors of varying size. Board members are appointed by the Museums Director and serve fixed terms during good behaviour. The musuem board chooses from among its members the chair, who can be removed upon expiry of ordinary board appointment, by constructive vote of non-confidence by during a properly constituted board meeting or by the Museums Director for cause.

Individual museum boards may be overridden by the collective museums executive committee. It is comprised entirely of ex officio members: the Chief Director of Cultural Institutions or designate, the Director of Museums or designate, and the board chairs of the constituent museums.

While they are distributed across the country fairly evenly, this is a result of the importance of particular communties to particular branches of history, not demographics or porkbarrelling. Consider that Potato Island has no national museum at all, while neighbouring South Island (with less than a quarter of the population of its distant counterpart) has two like Thuvia.


Science and technology

These museums aim to educate children and adults in the scientific method and to show how pure science can be applied for the benefit of humanity. See also the Sober Thought Archive of Science below.

They also try to demonstrate the potentially negative impacts of technology so that one may consider all the facts when praising or condemning the applied fruits of pure thought.


Natural resources and business

Similarly, human economic transactions may also impact the natural environment. Outside visitors from countries which are corporate bordellos or complulsory consumerist states sometimes dismiss these exhibits as pinko propaganda, while those from left-wing countries dismiss them as business newspeak

When both occur simultaneously, the Sober Thought government gives its museum curators and docents a well-deserved bonus in their pay packets for steering the middle course.

  • Sober Thought Museum of Agriculture, Lesbaies, Pastbeshchye
  • Sober Thought Museum of Automotive Tranpsortation (see above)
  • Sober Thought Museum of Energy, Zalevfyerma, Cholmestay
  • Sober Thought Museum of Fisheries, Paidrig, North Island
  • Sober Thought Museum of Forestry, Johnstown, Braunekuste
  • Sober Thought Museum of Geology and Mining (see above)
  • Sober Thought Museum of Numismatics and Philately, Capital Province
  • Sober Thought Museum of Railways (see above).


Culture

This category focuses on human interactions with one another and the external expression of the internal human spirit. The cultural museums attempt to capture the social and artistic odyssey of life in Sober Thought and, to a lesser extent, around the world.

Although the collections held at the institutions below are extensive, they do not include the separately organised Sober Thought Libraries and #Sober Thought Archives, many of which might otherwise belong here.


Sober Thought Libraries

The federal government maintains a system of several national libraries across the country to serve internal research needs, scholarly investigation and cultural preservation. The governance resembles that of the museums but the physical presentation is much more geared towards adults and formal learning than museums. The memebers of the system are:

  • Sober Thought Library of Agriculture, Lareine, Pastbeshchye
  • Sober Thought Library of Deposit (containing copies of works submitted for copyright protection), Capital Province
  • Sober Thought Library of Health Science, Schweindorf, Central Province
  • Sober Thought Library and Archive of Literature (containing both pubished works and unpublished manuscripts), Mont Royaume, Hochelaga.

Furthermore, the Directorate of Libraries gives grants to lending and reference libraries operated by governments, businesses and organisations in various provinces which meet certain criteria, viz.: user registration is free or at a nominal charge, collection policies are not based solely upon political or social content and the collection has significant educational content.


Sober Thought Archives

The federal government maintains three archives across the country to preserve original documents for historical research. The Sober Thought Library and Archive of Literature, operated jointly with the Directorate of Libraries, preserves the written arts in various stages of development from conception, polishing and public presentation. It deals with liberary works like short stories, novels, poetry, plays and screenplays.

Unless they were written by literary figures, diaries, memoranda, reminiscences and similar writings which one might think belong in the literature archive may be found instead at the Sober Thought Archive of History. Old records created by the government itself like cabinet minutes, census records, vital statistics and contract tenders are also found here. Old records created by outside agencies and individuals like business records, organisational minutes, personal letters and newspaper scrapbooks may be acquired and stored here if they are of lasting national importance.

The Sober Thought Archive of Science contains similar items to that of the literary library and archive, and the historical archive. However, by its name, one can tell the scope is narrower and different. Furthermore, this scope means that there is a lot more realia or three dimensional artifacts involved, such as microscope slides, rock samples, chemical models, scale prototypes and entomological samples. Thus, it tends to resemble an embryonic museum rather than a simple archive.

The Directorate of Archives gives grants to archival agencies operated by provincial governments on a basis similar to but stricter than that of libraries.


Sober Thought Historic Sites

The federal government owns scores of sites across the country where landmark events of political, social, scientific, military or natural history occurred. Often, structures or archaeological excavations (e.g., birthhome of a politicisan, ruins of a military fort, observation tower, lighthouse destroyed by stormsurge, bone pit) remain and are operated as small museums with a very narrow scope and small numbers of artifacts.

The Director of Historic Sites appoints, in the normal civil service manner, a full-time superintendent and such paid staff are necessary for each site. The superintendent may, and often does, secure volunteer assistance from community members and establish an advisory committee. The committees typically have representation from the chartered or unchartered municipality in which the site is located, voluntary organisations with a special interest in the site (e.g., a women's group for a site related to women's suffrage), local history organisations, and nearby municipal or provincial educational institutions.

As their name implies, the committees may make recommendations but the superintendent does not have to follow them. However, it is a foolish superintendent indeed who fails to coopt the labour and knowledge of local enthusiasts to preserve, enhance and promote the national historic site.

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