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2. INTERLUDE: SYSTEMIC PROPERTIES IN OTHER GALAXIES

Although we know about the Milky Way clusters in impressive detail, we must eventually look to other galaxies to see genuinely large samples of clusters over their full range of properties. Those in other large spiral galaxies generally appear very much like the Milky Way GCS (Harris 1991; Ashman & Zepf 1998), but the same is certainly not true for the many E galaxies, both giants and dwarfs, in which we now have GCS information. Working with the GCS in a distant galaxy has at least one very large advantage over observing the integrated field-star halo light: the globular clusters can be isolated one by one, and can thus be used to construct a full distribution function by metallicity, luminosity, or radial velocity. The lingering question is, of course, to ask whether or not the GCS is truly representative of the entire old halo. We will gain some additional clues to this important question as we go on.