There were lots of tales about bunyips in the 19th century from across the south east of Australia. As part of my work with the Research Centre for Deep History at Australian National University, I’ve been exploring workflows for capturing and mapping historical stories like these as part of broader landscapes. This blog post looks at a few of my experiments, along with some considerations and identified challenges, and hopefully some useful links and references along the way.
This long read on the pathways and trails found in and through collections is based on my recent keynote presentation at the 2019 Research Applications in Information and Library Studies (RAILS) Conference, Towards Critical Information Research, Education & Practice, hosted by the School of Information Studies at Charles Sturt University (28-29 October 2019).
In late June 2019, Tristram Hunt wrote a piece for The Guardian: ‘Should museums return their colonial artefacts?’
Here I want to focus specifically on museum documentation, viewed through the lens of what is perhaps Hunt’s most problematic statement: “For a museum like the V&A, to decolonise is to decontextualise.” Any examination of museum artefacts online quickly reveals that, when it comes to metadata, missing context is a significant issue, and the concept of decolonisation a valuable part of the solution.
“A thin veneer of immediate reality is spread over nature and artificial matter, and whoever wishes to remain in the now, with the now, on the now, should please not break its tension film. Otherwise the inexperienced miracle-worker will find himself no longer walking on water but descending upright among staring fish” (Vladimir Nabokov, 1972).
In his short novel Transparent Things (1972) Nabokov suggests that, unless we are careful, we sink into the history of things. Remaining fully in the present is difficult; it takes effort not to slip into reflection, memories, and the past. But in the museums and collections space things can often prove more resistant.
For as long as there have been museums some have been concerned by the lack of information available to the public. In 1784, William Hutton was aggrieved when he found the British Museum showed objects with no context, and little more than their names attached. This piece, based on a presentation given to the 2017 National Digital Forum in Wellington, NZ, argues that we need to work toward an expanded view of collection description and documentation, one which encompasses rich connectivity, relationality, and the complex structures required to represent contemporary understandings of collections-based knowledge.
This long read (c2700 words) is a version of the paper I gave at the CIDOC2017 Conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, on 26 September 2017.
Collections in large museums and archives are not uniformly documented. Museums Victoria (MV), in Melbourne, Australia, holds around 17 million items, including natural history specimens, history and technology artefacts, and Indigenous cultures, as well as archives and a library. Parts of the collections are rarely seen, let alone used. Documentation for some of these lesser items has changed little since the days of catalogue cards, the same data simply migrated from system to system for decades without being edited or updated.
This paper was presented on my behalf by Tom Norcliffe on 27 September 2017, at the Australian Society of Archivists’ conference ‘Diverse Worlds,’ 25-28 September, Melbourne, Australia.
The origins of this paper can be traced back to September 2016, with the release of a draft document by the International Council on Archive’s Expert Group on Archival Description (or EGAD) titled ‘Records in Contexts – A Conceptual Model for Archival Description’ – RiC for short. My purpose is not so much to critique or challenge that document, as to use it as the starting point for a broader discussion.
In September last year the International Council on Archives’ Expert Group on Archival Description (EGAD) published the first consultation draft of Records in Contexts: A Conceptual Model for Archival Description with the call for comments closing on 31 January 2016. I submitted some hastily-assembled thoughts on the final day. For those interested in such things, here they are.
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