Monty: meanings and context online

We have a painting in our house of a boy. We call him Monty. He’s in early 19^th cent garb, hands crossed on a desk, with what might be a watch in front of him. We think it’s a 20^th century copy and we’ve never found the artist listed anywhere.

He’s called Monty because we stopped at Monte Carlo’s restaurant in Lynchburg after we bought him. We bought him because we had sat too long at an auction in Gretna, Virginia and our bid turned out to be the only one! He’s hung in our house for twenty years, and we remember him spooking our nieces when they came to visit (“he looks creepy”). He's a reminder of when we first had some excess disposable income (honestly, he was pretty cheap!) and when we started going to auctions and buying stuff we didn’t need.

If you’re still with me I was thinking of Monty regarding what we catalog and what gets shared when collections are posted online. Cataloging is much more about recording attributes about objects for tracking. The catalog record for Monty would only just hint at why he’s an important artifact for us. Obviously objects have meanings and associations beyond their physical characteristics, and Monty’s meaning is tied up in our personal history and the other objects in our collection. The painting isn’t a museum object, but the meaning imbedded in objects is  often be tangential to their physical form. Meaning comes from how those objects have related to other objects around them, and the time and place in which they exist.

In High Fidelity by Nick Hornby the main character, after breaking up with his girlfriend, re-catalogs his vinyl collection in autobiographical order (reminding us that cataloging is a cultural, not scientific activity). The meanings of the albums lies in their physical proximity.

I’m still picking through A History of the World in 100 Objects by (MacGregor 2011). It’s the contextual information that makes this such a great book, and it shows the power of material culture. There’s many reasons, and many audiences for online collections data, but I think when we put data online we must work as hard as possible to contextualize the objects, and let them exist within that broader context. And, if possible, we have to let others create (and hopefully) share their meanings of those objects. Someone else owned Monty once and, for them, it had a completely different set of associations and meanings. I’d love to know what they were.

References

Macgregor, Neil (2001) A History of the World in 100 Objects. Viking, New York.

How many objects is enough? Digital assets and scale.

The Europeana project is a tremendous undertaking allowing access to “millions of items from a range of Europe's leading galleries, libraries, archives and museums.” The collections are language interdependent – since the portal is available in all eu languages, with on-the fly translation. To accomplish this project there has been a massive amount of work on rights, standards, and data normalization. The site presents access to a shared cultural heritage, serving both political and social purposes.

But how does scale affect the presentation and use of digital content? Working on a collection of 700+ objects for the Mount Vernon midden project I have to wonder at the pros and cons of such vastly different projects. It seems almost silly to compare them  - and obviously there are many, many aspects to the Europeana project - but as a visitor to the sites, how do they serve their audiences?

I know the curatorial work that has gone in to the Mount Vernon midden project. Recognizing that it’s an archaeological assemblage, where context is always primary, the objects there have to been seen within the larger framework: the reciprocal links from objects to themes, and items; the linked excavation layers; the linked related primary documents; the historical and archaeological background. If these items were aggregated to a common site much would be lost. It’s the context that informs the objects, giving meaning within the framework of the whole carefully constructed site.

A key part of the Europeana site is the development of a common standard allowing sharing and collaboration. But what is lost when we reduce objects to a common core? I’m still working through the CIDOC CRM standard, (understanding it to be more concerned with relationships than fields). Oldman lucidly argues in his recent blog (Oldman & Doerr, 2013)/, that aggregation through core fields is a misplaced goal. He sees a better approach in a richer CRM standard, publishable through aggregation format, noting in broad terms the loss of context and meaning as objects are moved away from their curatorial origins. [Readers interested in questions of scale in digital media will find a more thorough and informed exploration in Oldman's blogs!]

The Europeana API potentially allows museums to link back to the Europeana collections, though I didn’t see this implemented. If I’m looking at a beautiful agateware teapot in the Fitzwilliam museum, I’d like the option to see similar examples. It seems there still a way to go in the implementation of the tools.  For the Europeana exhibits, though the content and presentation was great, what I wanted was a way to expand the content. Perhaps I missed the feature but why, with millions of objects available, am I limited within the exhibit to those selected for me? I understand providing a narrative, but can’t a layered experience be provided that allows visitors to go further into the collections, to add their own objects? 

The Europeana project is a tremendous undertaking, and the use of common standards leads to long-term benefits for sharing and collaboration. But when we visit a museum there’s a conscious and unconscious preparation. "Normally the physical museum serves as a context, where various properties of buildings, rooms, exhibitions and other features are border resources.” (Nilsson 1997). Digital content experienced through a web browser starts as a reductive experience. It’s important, I think, to compensate for this loss with as richly contextualized environment as possible.

Links and citations:

Europeana - Homepage. (2013). Retrieved June 24, 2013, from http://www.europeana.eu/

Nilsson, T. (1997). The interface of a museum: Text, context and hypertext in a performance setting. In ICHIM 97: international conference on hypermedia and interactivity in museums (pp. 146-153).

Oldman, D., & Doerr, M. (2013). The Costs of Cultural Heritage Data Services: The CIDOC CRM or Aggregator formats? Retrieved from http://www.oldman.me.uk/blog/costsofculturalheritage/

SHA 2012

New NPS collections web site

The lack of blogging has been due to too much going on rather than too little! But I hope I can share projects and other news over the next few months.

July always seems early to be thinking about a January conference, but the Society for Historical Archaeology conference in Baltimore had its deadline for submissions yesterday… . My topic will be “Online archaeology databases and the public” and I mean to talk about the new NPS website, as well as other online catalogs. The Mount Vernon site - 400 extremely well described objects, in a rich context – makes a great contrast. Which is more useful to the public?

There was a great technical leaflet in the AASLH publication” Designing Education Programs that Connect Students to Collections”. It focuses on planning educational content around objects, but I think much of it applies to online collections. The national educational curriculum is doing little to help the social sciences. And unless you want to appeal to a purely local audience the different state standards make creating lessons plans difficult. It is mentioned here - and I discovered this many years ago with the Jamestown modules - it useful to look at the English learning standards which are more focused on reading for understanding than the History ones which, at least in Virginia tend to be more fact based. 

I’d be interested in anyone has site or articles looking at using online collections.