Digitization and Documentation in North American Collections: A History in Interviews
name: label: Creator
content: Greene, Candace S.
label: Creator
content: Turner, Hannah
creator: label: Creator
content: Greene, Candace S.
label: Creator
content: Turner, Hannah
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 0.2 Megabytes (1 PDF)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 2015
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Anthropological Archives
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NAA.2019-09
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Megabytes
scopecontent: label: Content Description
content: This project was intended to document some major institutional changes and challenges in
cataloging and digitizing material culture in anthropological collections that have taken
place over the past 30-50 years of museum practice. The project was initiated in 2015 by
Dr. Candace Greene, who was concerned that the operational history of digitization in
museum anthropological collections in North America was not well recorded. Much of this
information was at risk of being lost or forgotten, and it was important to capture some of
the institutional memory concerning the creation of electronic catalogs, from early
database development to digital photographs to online access. Dr. Hannah Turner, whose
research focuses on museum informational practices, was contracted to carry out
interviews to gather oral history.
This record includes:
Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
(interviewee: Ann Stevenson); Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada (interviewee: Barb Rice); American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, USA (interviewee: Brian Carpenter); American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA (interviewee: John Hansen); National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, USA (interviewee: DucPhong Nguyen); Phoebe A Hearst Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Berkeley, USA. (interviewee: Michael Black).