1.Working with Data Capturing Perspective and Significance from Collection Systems (or the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything) DOMINIC OLDMAN, BRITISH MUSEUM PROJECT DIRECTOR, RESEARCHSPACE SCOTLANDS NATIONAL COLLECTIONS AND THE DIGITAL HUMANITIES W ORKSHOP ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH Deep Thought recommends a humanities computing approach

2. Hidden Histories UCL Symposium 2011 Messages: optimistic dissatisfaction with progress to date, because of an overwhelming propensity to view computers as the answer to drudgery. Rather than providing new ways of understanding and interpreting the past, we have been limited to producing knowledge jukeboxes. Willard McCarty (Sept, 2011) -Efficiency Machines! 3. Getting the right answerneeds real world context Proper Digital Humanities modelling & simulation of the real world The Independent THURSDAY 01 MAY 2014 Potential similar to museum collection systems! 4. (16th / 17th ) Life and the Universe: The Wunderkammer A network of relationships and meaning based on unity within the chaos of nature. (Patterns / Concepts) Not comprehensive but representative across the world. Agsburg, Getty Institute 5. 18th - Collecting & the Enlightenment! More sophisticated questions. More comprehensive collections. Artificial and natural still combined. Themes explored Intersubjective! 18th and 19th Specialisms and division. New Knowledge at the expense of unity.Enlightenment Gallery BM Technology, language, belief. 6. 19th - Specialist Museums & Disunity Edmund Oldfield Assistant Keeper of Antiquities at the British Museum in 1857. Q: Is it an accident that the library, natural history specimens, sculptures and antiquities were part of the same institution? A: I think it is Antonio Panizzi British Museums Principal Librarian Asserted a fundamental distinction between Christian art and heathen antiquities We forget the history of things 7. British Museum 2-gram Relevance? 22:14 8. Long Term Knowledge Infrastructures BM research in New Scientist, 1983 I dont know if youve ever read of the number of people directly involved with the unearthing of the tomb of Tutankhamen who came to an untimely end? Yes, I have, Alison agreed. The Ancient stories were all recalled in the newspaper articles when the Tutankhamen exhibition was on at the BM not so long ago. Elizabeth Hoy, Shadows on the Sand Conarain, 1974 . Permanent versus temporary 9. My God!...What have [museums] done! The object is removed from its cultural, historical and intersubjective context. Made to stand, for a larger abstract whole. (Collection of the Enlightenment) Computers can destroy even the museum context. *W.G. Sebald Image, Archive, Modernity J.J. Long (Prof Susan Stewart) 10. Technology led commoditisation of Information Can one hope for the 'virtual museum'? Yes, if one holds a universalist view of the world where different contents could be moulded into identical forms. No, if one thinks that each system of representation should keep its own characteristics regarding form as well as contents. ((Dominique Delouis, 1993 - RAMA) The value is in the difference! 11. Cultural Heritage Aggregation SQUEEZING MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES into a SINGLE UNINFORMED PERSPECTIVE In the past we have focussed on conformity in naming HARMONISING PERSPECTIVES Increasingly it seems that we should have concerned ourselves with the relationshipsbetween the objects David Bearman (1995) Aftermath of the RAMA project 12. Whats Cool? 13. he was convinced that everything he had written hitherto consisted solely in a string of the most abysmal errors and lies, the consequences of which were immeasurable. A fear founded in the relentless spread of stupidity which he had observed everywhere, and which he believed had already invaded his own head. It was as if one was sinking into sand. Max Sebald Rings of Saturn Meaning and Understanding 14. Meaningless 15. Publishing does not create understanding Unnecessary invention of ontologies. Difficult to utilise outside a narrow context. Not designed as cross disciplinary. Makes more sophisticated uses difficult and unsustainable. History shows that top down value based data collaborations provide; Information with limited meaning Poor data integration Poor sustainability Linked Data understanding 16. Siloed Perspective, but still important Our collections define (frame) our view of the world. Our perspective of an object defined by our disciplines, geography, purpose and audiences. A person or a place defined and described in relation to the collections. 17. We cannot keep everything forever. But. Views on significance depend upon perspective and can change over time. *S+ignificance decisions inevitably privilege some memories and marginalise or exclude others. It is vital to understand, respect and document the context of collection materialsthe events, activities, phenomena, places, relationships, people, organisations and functions that shape collection materials. 18. My Home Town: Lowestoft The Death of the Fishing Industry 19. Earliest site for human habitation in Britain. Roman settlement. Settled by the Danes in the 9th century after killing the King of the East Angles. Many important navel battles fought on the coast. Battle of Lowestoft. Important fishing town since middle ages. A Wikipedia perspective! Lowestoft 20. British Museum Perspective 21. British Museum Perspective 22. Tate Perspective 23. The Swedish Perspective 24. Rijksmuseum Perspective 25. Metropolitan, New York, Perspective 26. National Maritime Museum Perspective 27. Scottish Museums Perspective 28. The Star of Scotland 29. Regional Perspective & Detail 30. The Jamaica in Lowestoft 31. Lowestoft & Scotland Mary MacDonald from Point, Lewis was a herring girl in the 1930s. She said I saw a lot of the world. I went to Lerwick, Stonsay, Lochmaddy, Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Peterhead and Fraserburgh. Herring girls or fisher lassies started this work at sixteen years old, often following in the footsteps of relatives and being taught by them. These women worked a six day week and often for 12-15 hours a day. They would start when the first catch came in which could be at 5am. Because of the nature of the fish the processing had to be quick so often the women did not stop, only having a snack or mug of tea where they were. As late as the 1960s women from Shetland were still working the herring in East Anglia. http://wovencommunities.org/collection/the- herring-industry/ 32. NGA, Washington Perspective Autumn Evening, Lowestoft Sir Muirhead Bone 33. Modern Lowestoft 34. Lowestoft & Conrad 35. Muirhead Bone and Joseph Conrad 36. Muirhead Bone (Glasgow) Links to British Museum examples? ???? 37. Digital Projects http://www.everythingisconnected.be joseph Conrad and lowestoft 38. The Point! 1. This took ages even with computers! 2. It should be instantaneous. The computer should already have found these relationships for me! 3. We have all this data embedded in our collection systems. It just needs to be represented in a real world way and harmonised. 39. Descriptive Perspective & Significance Although the ordering of material things takes place in each institution within rigidly defined distinctions that order individual subjects, curatorial disciplines, specific storage or display spaces, and artefacts and specimens, these distinctions may vary from one institution to another, being equally firmly fixed in each. a silver teaspoon made in the eighteenth century in Sheffield would be classified as 'Industrial Art' in Birmingham City Museum, 'Decorative Art' at Stoke on Trent, 'Silver' at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and 'Industry' at Kelham Island Museum in Sheffield. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge (1992) 40. Vocabularies 41. Contextual Semantics & CRM 42. Standards based on values 43. Fundamental Categories 44. EDM Properties CRM relationships 45. Too Specialist!! 46. Best of Both Worlds 47. Precis ion & Recall 48. Contextual Instance Matching (using object data) oTerminology Concepts, Names and Places oIs my John Smith your John Smith. o Associated People o Subjects o Types of production o Objects Types o Artistic Schools or group o Inscriptions o Etc oThe more information the more inferences we can make. 49. Unsystematic, Intersubjective Contextual, Research, 50. History & Memory a never-ending chain of meaningless moments Max Sebald The Rings of Saturn 51. Thanks Dominic oldman, British museum Project director, ResearchSpace Scotlands National Collections and the Digital Humanities workshop Royal Society of Edinburgh @researchspace DOldman@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk