As it’s Museum Week, I’m going to take this opportunity to share some photos I took on a recent trip to the Melbourne Museum and the Immigration Museum in Melbourne, Australia. My interest in documentation and metadata means that, apart from the fascinating and often beautiful specimens and displays, I was also looking at labels and tags – from old taxonomic labels, and the details of collectors and collecting sites, to the forest of tags affixed to every pinned insect.<\/p>\n
In historical collections, labels often provide significant context and detail. The personal effects of Alfred Galbraith are interesting in their own right, but knowing they were likely on him when he died adds layers of emotion to the display; even more so for the Field Service postcard he sent just three days before he was killed in France.\u00a0The facsimile of Phar Lap’s Certificate of registration is a key evidential document, but the label provides the story of the origin of his name.<\/p>\n
And that leather jacket you can see in the bottom right hand corner is an iconic design in its own right which conjures ideas of rebellion, biking and\u00a0rock ‘n’ roll. But the metadata tells you it’s the jacket of the one and only Bon Scott.<\/p>\n
So when you’re in a museum this museum week, forget debates about government metadata legislation and data retention laws and check out the metadata surrounding objects instead. It provides layers of detail, context, narrative and emotion.<\/p>\n\n\t\t