Data Enrichment Facilitated by Existing Inter-Disciplinary Expertise at Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Abstract

Tamaki Paenga Hira - Auckland War Memorial Museum cares for documentary heritage, human history and natural sciences collections. Diversity in our collections has facilitated significant collaboration across collection professionals, scientists and cultural knowledge holders. Human history objects from our Pacific nations are primarily made using natural resources which present commonality in terms of care and needs between the Pacific and the Natural Sciences stores. Auckland Museum’s Pacific Collection Access Project enriches records of Pacific objects by working with Cultural Knowledge Holders from Auckland’s Pacific communities. Information is shared online to enact a visible expression of “Teu Le Vā” (Pacific dimension of nurturing relationships). Our project encourages collaboration between collection managers through the sharing of internal resources and expertise to enhance the Pacific collection’s data, for example by applying a Natural Science context to Human History objects. By adding the scientific name of naturally sourced materials of these objects we create a depth of knowledge about the collections. Marine sourced objects as a primary focus showed the frequent use of Gastropoda, Bivalvia and Marine mammal teeth. A significant challenge is identifying highly modified objects. By making this information available to the public we are welcoming discussions and input from the scientific community as well as the wider public. The significance of a Museum collection is closely related to its exposure and the interests it gets. Through Collections Online and Google Arts & Culture we are hoping to increase visibility of the links between our two collections and provide a wider search result using Linked Open Data. Future possibilities in curatorial research in Natural Sciences and Human History will follow on from this data enrichment.