Thanks everyone for your replies on and off list - even by this groups high
standards I've had more than I expected and certainly more than I can
digest in one go, but once I have taken it all in I'll aim to share
something back to the group.
The Wikidata angle seems promising and this query shared by Martin Poulter
in the Wikidata+GLAM Facebook group -
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Wikidata.GLAM/ - is an interesting example.
In his own words "It finds creators who are represented in the Ashmolean
Museum data set who also created other objects known to Wikidata. Feel free
to replace the Ashmolean Museum's Q number with that of your favourite
institution" - http://tinyurl.com/yc2mj73x
Just need everyone to get more objects into Wikidata!
Cheers, James
---
James Morley
Projects: www.catchingtherain.com
Twitter: @jamesinealing <https://twitter.com/jamesinealing> /
@PhotosOfThePast <https://twitter.com/photosofthepast>
On Fri, 1 Feb 2019 at 13:40, James Morley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I am currently working on a project for Kew Gardens called The Mobile
> Museum, looking at ways that the Kew collections of ethnographic artifacts
> and plant raw materials were distributed across the world from around 1850
> onwards. These went to other museums, research institutions, commercial
> companies and, mainly within the UK, schools.
>
> We're trying, both manually and digitally, to trace these and connect up
> any records. The manual part is being handled by researchers and has seen
> them visit institutions in the UK but also Australia and the US. For my
> part I am looking at the digital side and starting to explore ways that we
> can make or at least predict / narrow down those potential connections.
> This might involve being sent datasets, or accessing them directly (in the
> few cases where they have APIs) or through services like Europeana and
> Trove.
>
> More details below, but my question is whether anyone has seen any similar
> projects comparing datasets and trying to link objects between collections?
>
> To show the sorts of things I'm exploring
> - we have our own collection of things that were kept (often what was sent
> would have been duplicates/spares) and this includes metadata of scientific
> and common names, descriptions, sometimes origins and collectors etc
> - we have an 'Exit Book' which has records of what was sent, including
> where to and when, which also has details of scientific and common plant
> names; these have been transcribed and enriched with broadly standardised
> metadata including dates, plant names, recipient institutions, and geography
> - in some cases we are in touch with recipient organisations (like the
> British Museum) and they have provided simple csv record extracts of
> objects known to have been received from Kew. That's fine for selected
> major institutions, but there are about 1,000 distinct recipients and
> 40,000 objects so that's not going to scale, plus it relies on high quality
> historic record keeping and metadata to even find the data
>
> Here's an example:
> In 1866 Kew sent some material to the British Museum, and within this was
> an Iban skirt from Sarawak (indeed before this there are Kew archival
> records that show it was sent to Kew by James Brooke, the first Rajah of
> Sarawak). That item was then actually passed on to the Pitt Rivers. We
> have accession data (transcribed but not yet publicly available) that
> states “5 pieces of native cloth from Borneo” were received at Kew from
> Brooke on 24 June 1856, plus details of the geographic origin etc. Through
> painstaking manual research these have been connected to an item in the
> Pitt Rivers (available online, but they don't appear to have permalinks to
> object records) which includes mentions of Sarawak, Iban, and part of the
> text description reads "The width suggests that it might be a skirt length"
> plus includes the date 24 June 1854 (which is itself only a partial match
> as at some point it appears to have been mis-transcribed!). Not a huge
> amount to go on, but it feels like there could be enough tantalising
> details to start making connections.
>
> I know it's a long shot but if anyone has any ideas and examples of
> comparing very variable datasets and predicting matches based on metadata
> and/or textual descriptions (or even visual comparisons, but that's an even
> longer shot practically and technically!) then I'd love to hear of them.
>
> Thanks,
>
> James
>
> PS if anyone is interested in this field then we have a conference
> "Collections in Circulation" happening at Kew, 9-10 May (a wonderful time
> to visit the gardens!) - see
> https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/collections-in-circulation-international-conference-registration-53049015032
>
>
> ---
> James Morley
> Projects: www.catchingtherain.com
> Twitter: @jamesinealing <https://twitter.com/jamesinealing> /
> @PhotosOfThePast <https://twitter.com/photosofthepast>
>
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