Kong | digitalpasifik.org - Making Visible and Accessible Digitized Cultural Heritage
Channel: MSU Digital Humanities
Date: 2023-03-09

Tim Kong | Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa - National Library of New Zealand

The Pacific Virtual Museum project seeks to "make visible and accessible the digitized cultural heritage of the Pacific, for people in and of the Pasifik." Defining what is "digitized" and what is "cultural heritage" is often done from the institutional perspective of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. These institutions do valuable work, but default to caring for and enabling access to the mediums they can best store and maintain and they are mostly based in Western and developed nations. These institutions hold many thousands of records of and from the Pacific, which often have varied details about their provenance, use or application. At the same time, if Pacific people are aware these institutions exist, they are unlikely to know about these records as the majority are only accessible in person, and are not digitized for online access. Pacific based communities and institutions are not often able to replicate these models of Western institutions. To do so would involve costs far beyond them, and the reality of climate change impacts such as sea level rise, mean it’s debatable if it is prudent to do so. Additionally for Pacific people culture is a living and lived process - of the sharing and application of knowledge, such as the carving of vaka, or the performance of song or dance. This aspect of culture is not usefully or easily stored in digitized formats or on shelves, but it is crucial to make it visible and accessible for people of the Pacific. This workshop will present the thinking behind the design, development and functionality of the site digitalpasifik.org, that speaks to the tensions described. We will invite participants to consider how their records could be shared via the site, and how their organisations can consider ways to connect with people of the Pacific to more effectively make visible and accessible these records. The session will be interactive, with approximately 30 minutes of sharing and demonstration, then talanoa and conversation.

For more information about the symposium visit: https://msuglobaldh.org