CAG on museums: Documenting ethnographic collections

While making the new records for a recent acquisition of 14 objects collected from various regions of Papua New Guinea objects in the 1960s, some of the finer issues of metadata collection have been brought to my attention. By metadata, I mean the ‘structured data about data’ that is compiled in a computer and paper database about the objects that a museum holds. Some of the recent acquisition objects have been used for hunting or other purposes, and some are tourist arts. Museums document collections to help with research, curate exhibitions, develop education programs, and generally to share information about collections. Documentation work is what a few of my colleagues refer to as ‘the boring part of museum work.’

Axe, possibly tourist object 1960s, Mount Hagen Western Highlands

It’s not really boring, but it is the less glamorous part of the whole museum gig. Acquiring objects in my opinion is a really important part of the life of the museum collection. Collections aren’t meant to be stagnant in time and representative of an idea of the past. Especially for ethnographic collections, representing cultures not normally represented in the ethnographic present means continuing to build collections from the recent past and present is very important to the future.

Boar's tusk with cord attached, Siku clan, Central/Western Highlands

The partial benefit of acquiring new objects now is that most museums have very high standards of information acquisition alongside these objects or art pieces. That means that in the future there will hopefully be a lot more metadata connected to the databases in which we document collections, but it also means there are so many more issues of documenting collections.

Carved statue, Central Highlands

*Just some thoughts I’ve had while documenting (ethnographic) collections:

-The need for a consistency of terminology structure so that in the present and future users of the database may find the data they are looking for

-Will the information on the database be linked to the web for public searches and what does that mean

-Collection management works best when issues of access, use, and the rights to objects are put on a database directly at acquisition because chasing copyright permissions and doing paperwork IS actually boring

-And very importantly for ethnographic objects, the cultural groupings, language groups, and boundaries that we categorize information into for cultural objects might not always be so easy to restrict within specific terminology for the database- how do you create levels of metadata that might be useful for descendants, researchers, museum colleagues, and general audiences