Old objects, new media: Historical collections, digitization and affect

Abstract

Digital resources mobilized by museums, archives and other cultural heritage institutions are opening up collections and vistas onto the past from an increasing variety of perspectives. Digitization is enabling the juxtaposition of material from far-flung repositories and creating new ways of presenting historical insights as well as new types of historical engagements. New media can allow the assemblage of a multiplicity of voices, accounts, songs, and artworks, among other things – layers of meaning that are hard to capture and present in other formats, and which can be especially helpful in uncovering and accommodating non-Western perspectives. At the same time, the relationship of digital objects to ‘actual artefacts’ requires further consideration. This article investigates the implications of digitizing objects in cultural institutions, and the advantages and disadvantages of this process for those with differing interests in such objects. What are the effects for historical researchers, museum visitors or clan members with special ties to a museum artefact of viewing it on a screen rather than being in the object’s presence, holding, seeing, smelling and hearing it, and connecting with the ancestors or relationships it embodies? Case studies from the UK, Australia and the Pacific are explored to address aspects of the impact of digitization initiatives on museum practice and on people’s engagements with the past, with a focus on the affective qualities of digital objects.