Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum

Mike Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367551056
• eBook ISBN: 9781000405323
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Museum Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum provides the first interdisciplinary study of the digital documentation of artefacts and archives in contemporary museums, while also exploring the implications of polyphonic, relational thinking on collections documentation.

Drawing on case studies from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the book provides a critical examination of the history of collections management and documentation since the introduction of computers to museums in the 1960s, demonstrating how technology has contributed to the disconnection of distributed collections knowledge. Jones also highlights how separate documentation systems have developed, managed by distinct, increasingly professionalised staff, impacting our ability to understand and use what we find in museums and their ever-expanding online collections. Exploring this legacy allows us to rethink current practice, focusing less on individual objects and more on the rich stories and interconnected resources that lie at the heart of the contemporary, plural, participatory 'relational museum.'

Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum is essential reading for those who wish to better understand the institutional silos found in museums, and the changes required to make museum knowledge more accessible. The book is a particularly important addition to the fields of museum studies, archival science, information management, and the history of cultural heritage technologies.

Chapter 1

Archives and museums

In 1880, George Nathan Maynard became the first paid curator at the Saffron Walden Museum in what is now the Uttlesford district of Essex, England. More than 45 years had passed since the museum was built and opened by the Saffron Walden Natural History Society.¹ There was much to do. After reorganising the collections and creating a register for new accessions, Maynard turned his attention to documenting the objects that had already been collected.² The result was ‘No. 1 – Register of Articles obtained for the Saffron Walden Museum from the year 1832 to 1880 or 1881.’ Writing the title page in 1897, Maynard noted that the information it contained had been ‘Compiled from various sources; principally through the late Mr. Joseph Clarke—by lables [sic] and other memorandums, letters, etc. etc., the original register—if it existed—being lost.’³

The register is a beautiful example of early museum documentation and suggests its author was careful, even fastidious, about detail. Entries include dates, identifiers, donor information, coloured sketches, transcribed inscriptions, and notes. The intention appeared to be that the register become a compendium, not only of all that was known about each object, but also of the evidence for that knowledge, being the ‘memorandums, letters, etc.’ from which the data was drawn. With no institutional archives or archivist, when Maynard found such items he wrote a cross-reference beside the entry, flipped to the back, and simply pasted them in (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Letter to Mr. Gibson, in No. 1—Register of Articles obtained for the Saffron Walden Museum from the year 1832 to 1880 or 1881. Reproduced by permission of Saffron Walden Museum.

Maynard’s register represents a ‘curatorial approach’ to archival evidence, in contrast to the ‘recordkeeping approach’ at institutions like the British Museum (see Introduction). Though distinct, both are the product of the gradual professionalisation of practice in museums and archives, and both separate collections-based knowledge—one removing records from their archival context, and the other isolating them from the objects to which they refer. Despite these evident limitations, most museums persist with curatorial or recordkeeping approaches to their documentary collections. This chapter explores the intersecting histories of museums, the archival profession, and museum archives, looking at how professionalisation and the development of collections management techniques formalised splits between collections, formats, and disciplines. Today the legacies of ‘curatorial’ and ‘recordkeeping’ approaches first implemented in the nineteenth century continue to shape the way we interact with collections, including in online spaces.

The emergence of the archival profession

According to James L. Howgego, Keeper of Prints and Pictures at the Guildhall, London, archivists are part of ‘a long and honourable ancestry which can be traced at least as far back as Moses.’⁴ As befits a profession with supposed biblical roots, many European archives in the middle ages and early modern period were held by religious institutions. For example, at St. Paul’s Cathedral in the first part of the seventeenth century the duties of the sacrist included archives as well as artefacts: ‘to look to and conserve the records and evidences, reliques, jewells, vestements, plate and all ornaments whatsoever belongs to the church.’⁵ Beyond the church, kingdoms and city states managed legal documents, records about property and lands, and similar as evidence of their actions, agreements and authority.⁶

Archives are more than just assortments of individual documents brought together by a collector or institution. They comprise groups of records produced by the activity of a person or organisation which are then preserved in aggregate for their administrative, historical, or social value.⁷ The emphasis on groups and aggregates here is significant. As American archivist Theodore Schellenberg notes, archival records have ‘a collective rather than a unitary significance,’⁸ and are managed and described accordingly. Many look to the French Revolution as the germinal moment for contemporary archives.⁹ Over subsequent decades archives expanded and became increasingly formalised throughout Europe. If the nineteenth century was the ‘age of museums,’¹⁰ it was equally an age of archives.¹¹ The founding of France’s Archives Nationales was followed by the development of modern archival repositories in the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, and Spain.¹² The United Kingdom’s first Public Record Act in 1838 (seven years before the first Museums Act)¹³ was followed by the construction of a purpose-built repository in the 1850s.¹⁴ Ideas developed during this period were later formalised in the Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives (1898), considered the first text to articulate the principles of modern archives and archival description.¹⁵ The so-called ‘Dutch Manual’ was translated into French, German, English, Italian, Portuguese, and Chinese,¹⁶ influencing practice internationally.

In the twentieth century archivists continued their journey towards specialisation and professionalisation. Hilary Jenkinson joined the UK’s Public Record Office in 1906, becoming a staunch advocate for the value of archives and the importance of archivists in modern society.¹⁷ His A Manual of Archive Administration (1922) remained in print for several decades.¹⁸ In the United States, archivists held their first conference as part of the American Historical Association’s twenty-fifth anniversary annual meeting (1909). Historian and archivist Waldo Leland noted the event: ‘marked the formal and conscious recognition of the administration of archives as a distinct profession similar to other custodial professions, but differing from them in demands and qualifications.’¹⁹ The 1930s then saw the founding of the National Archives and the appointment of the first national archivist (1934);²⁰ the start of the Society of American Archivists (1936);²¹ and the establishment of The American Archivist journal (1938).²² The United Kingdom followed, forming the Society of Local Archivists in 1947 (later the Society of Archivists). By the time Jenkinson published The English Archivist: A New Profession (1948)²³ the message was clear: archivists were professionals responsible for distinct institutions and practices. Cementing this transnational trend, the International Council on Archives (ICA) was founded in 1948, and two years later archivists from around the world assembled in Paris for their First International Congress.²⁴

Museums and documentary collections

The history of museums from classical European antiquity to the modern era is well-documented. But while dictionary definitions emphasise objects, artefacts, and specimens,²⁵ early modern museums held mixed collections, including substantial documentary material. The prominence of manuscripts in these institutions reflects the diversity of formats found in the cabinets of curiosity that were often their founding collections. When Elias Ashmole donated his collection to the University of Oxford in 1677 it included objects, an antiquarian library, and immensely valuable manuscript collections including material related to medicine, astrology, heraldry, and local history.²⁶ Similarly, the British Museum was founded with the collection of Sir Hans Sloane, soon combined with two other collections—the Cottonian Library of books and manuscripts, and the Harleian collection of manuscripts—to form a three-part collection: ‘Printed Books (including prints); Manuscripts (including medals); and Natural and Artificial Productions (everything else).’²⁷

As these categories suggest, internal distinctions between libraries, archives, and museum collections are in some respects as old as the modern museum itself;²⁸ however, these manuscripts were not, strictly speaking, archives. Some, like Sloane’s, were primarily part of working libraries.²⁹ Others, like the Harleian collection, were conscious attempts to gather together a wide collection of materials for scholars.³⁰ The term ‘manuscripts’ also encompassed diverse material, acting as a catch-all for anything that wasn’t printed and published. Illuminated medieval manuscripts and early religious texts, compendiums of medical recipes and drug prescriptions, and composites of miscellaneous booklets and fragments³¹ could all be included under the title.

The mixed personal collections found in these early museums reflected a long-standing belief in the interconnected nature of knowledge and scholarship. At a time when Renaissance collections and cabinets of curiosity brought together disparate material in pursuit of knowledge,³² Francis Bacon described the ideal tools for Renaissance learning: a library, a botanical and zoological garden, a ‘still house’ or laboratory for conducting experiments, and a large collection of natural and man-made items.³³ Many figures in the early history of museums were followers of the ‘Baconian method,’ including Ashmole, and the first director of the National Museum of Victoria, Frederick McCoy.³⁴ McCoy was also one of four inaugural professors at the new University of Melbourne. He taught chemistry, mineralogy, and botany, and develop a botanic ‘system garden’ on the university campus³⁵; he studied zoology and palaeontology; and he was sole scientific officer in charge of the rapidly growing museum collection.³⁶ The university continues to acknowledge this tradition today. The historic System Garden is maintained a short distance from the recently-completed Arts West building, architected to ‘produce a contemporary version of the sixteenth-century Kunst und Wunderkammer.’³⁷

As museums grew they were also creating their own records. Archivist and records manager Charlotte Brunskill ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Archives and museums
• 2 Museums Victoria and the history of museum computing
• 3 Field books, dissociation, and organisational knowledge
• 4 Donald Thomson and the relationality of collections
• 5 Beyond networks: reconceptualising collections documentation
• Conclusion: from theory to implementation
• Bibliography
• Index