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Ch 8 Collection Data
Thursday March 9, 2023, starting at 16:30 GMT = 17:30 CET (for 90 minutes)
Convenors: Victoria Donnellan (British Museum), Paula Granados García (British Museum, Endangered Material Knowledge Programme)
Youtube link: https://youtu.be/hLVyFX2uIZQ
Slides: tba
This session considers the use of data about objects and other museum holdings and online collections. What data is recorded in a museum record? Can a museum catalogue accommodate community diversity? What is the distinction between data and metadata (data that provides information about other data), and does this depend on the focus of the record? What data should be accessible, highlighted, foregrounded or concealed in certain contexts? What are the legal and ethical implications of releasing this information? We discuss these questions in the context of the British Museum Collection Database (Mi+) and the Endangered Material Knowledge Programme.
- Robin Boast, Michael Bravo & Ramesh Srinivasan. 2007. “Return to Babel: Emergent diversity, digital resources, and local knowledge.” The Information Society 23-5, 395-403. Available: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220175635_Return_to_Babel_Emergent_Diversity_Digital_Resources_and_Local_Knowledge
- Marijke Kunst. 2017. “Being True to the Catalogue.” In Stijn Schoonderwoerd ed. Words Matter. Tropen Museum. Avalilable: https://www.tropenmuseum.nl/sites/default/files/2021-04/words_matter.pdf.pdf
- Antony Griffiths. 2010. “Collections Online: The Experience of the British Museum.” Master Drawings 48-3, 356–67. Not open access: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25767237.
- Michael Jones. 2019. “Collections in the Expanded Field: Relationality and the Provenance of Artefacts and Archives.” Heritage 2-1, 884-897. Available: https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage2010059
- Kathleen Lawther. 2023. “People-Centred Cataloguing.” Available: http://www.kathleenlawther.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/people-centred-cataloguing-final.pdf
- L. Noehrer, A. Gilmore, C. Jay et al. 2021. “The impact of COVID-19 on digital data practices in museums and art galleries in the UK and the US.” Humanities & Social Sciences Communications 8, 236 (2021). Available: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00921-8
- Can Zhao, Michael B. Twidale & David M. Nichols. 2018. “Acquiring metadata to support biographies of museum artefacts.” Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries. LNCS 11279. 304-315. Available: https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/12264/zhao-acquiring-metadata-icadl-2018.pdf
- British Museum Collection Database
- Endangered Material Knowledge Programme
- Spectrum
- Spectrum Cataloguing procedure
- Look at the first links provided below for two objects at the British Museum Online Collection. One of them is a very rich catalogue record, it has relevant links inserted, plenty of bibliographic references and history of the object. The other example is not so rich and lacks quite a bit of relevant information.
- Compare both records and think about what information, data and metadata they contain or may not contain. Reflect about what data is missing, who is the expected user for each record, what information should be included but is not there and what other information might be useful for other users.
- Use the two links provided below to export the records’ data into an excel file and import it into a Google Spreadsheet.
- Using Google Spreadsheets, enrich the records with any missing information that you think would be useful to include in the page (images, description, data, etc.). You can use the functionalities of Google Spreadsheets to query Wikipedia and include other links from the web. Add any other data or metadata that you would like to make available, reflect on under what terms or licenses, for what purpose and for what audiences.
- Bring your mock-up catalogue data records and notes on these questions to class for discuss with the rest of the group.