Webinar: Bad Data: Histories of Museum Documentation and the Work of Repair

DCMI Webinar

This webinar will consider some current case studies in museum documentation and question what ‘bad’ data actually is in museum records, and how individuals are working with and against institutional norms in documentation. Using examples from British Columbia, I will trace how calling data ‘bad’ is both a moral claim about the nature of information and trustworthiness; but also a very practical lament concerning traditional museum record keeping practices.

Webinar participants will:

learn about museum documentation practices.
engage with the nature of information and trustworthiness in cultural heritage informatics.
learn about ethical and practical issues in museum documentation.

Presenter

Hannah Turner is a settler information and museum studies scholar in the School of Information at the University of British Columbia. She is concerned with how knowledge is made and controlled, the use of digital technologies in creating and curating information, and how we can create better access to information resources like museums. Her research traces the history of ethnographic museums and how they reproduce legacies of colonialism. Her 2020 book, Cataloguing Culture (UBC Press) is a history of documentation practices and the classification and the cataloguing of material culture collections in the Smithsonian’s Department of Anthropology. She also collaborates with artists and researchers on digital processes and the transmediation of material culture.

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