What do you do with artefacts in your family history
collection? Are they connected to your software entities (e.g. in some
database) and/or any digital images of the items?
An artefact is “an object made by a
human being, typically one of cultural or historical interest”.[1] The word is occasionally confused with ephemera, which are:
“Things that exist or are used or
enjoyed for only a short time”, and “Collectable items that were originally
expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity”.[2]
For the purposes of this genealogical blog-post, I will
consider ephemera to be a subset of artefacts and will not mention them
specifically.
Now that we’ve established the context, we should be able to
see that this discussion is about physical items, including original
photographs, actual letters, original documents, medals and other awards,
paintings, clothing, jewellery, furniture, personal possessions, and family
heirlooms. I’m particularly interested in this subject as I have several
examples myself, including photographs (which many people may have, possibly
stuffed in a biscuit tin), a police award, medals, military documents, an army
uniform, and personal letters.
A recent post in a LinkedIn group caught my attention as it
was about ‘Archiving your digital artifacts’. This confused me slightly since I
would not have used that term to describe digital files. It was basically about
their long-term storage (locally or in the cloud) and the preservation of their
integrity and fidelity. It is true that there are preservation issues for
digital data but this post conveniently skipped over the issue of real
artefacts. More interestingly, though, a couple of responses suggested that
people may be more interested in the digital editions because “…creating the
copies is how we are able to preserve some physical artifacts. Some artifacts
just don't last that long”. This belief contrasts sharply with the attitude in
archives and museums where preservation of the originals is a prime objective.
So, should we be interested in preserving our own originals,
or should we just endeavour to keep images of them? Preservation is not always
easy, and very few of us are experts in that field. It is usually considered to
be something of interest to those aforementioned institutions rather than to genealogists
and family historians. Let’s look at probably the most common case: original
photographs. If you’re sharing them with family and friends then digital
copies, and other types of reproduction, are worthwhile and easily generated.
If you want a copy for frequent consultation then a digital copy may also
prevent excessive access to a delicate original. If you turn an original
photograph over, though, then you may find invaluable annotation or notes in
someone’s original hand. For instance, I have a picture here of a solider in
1915, the back of which is actually a postcard sent by him, from France, to his
wife in Nottingham, England. Yes, an early form of “selfie”!
How, too, would a mere digital image convey the full shape,
quality, texture, etc., of a wedding dress, or of an army uniform? Some of my
relatives have a chess tabletop, carved in some type of stone — originally
seated on a wooden table that’s now long gone — and dated “MDCCCLIX [1859]
January I”. This was a present to my ancestor, Henry Procter, who is named at
the top of it, and who was married a couple of months earlier. The initials at
the bottom suggest that it was from a member of his wife’s family who I happen
to know was a stone mason. The issue here is that although its preservation is
easier, the digital images that I personally have of it do not do it justice. A
project to recreate a supporting table is planned which would allow it to be put
on show again, and possibly to enable it being used as a games table again.
Certainly, one feeling that underpins this fixation on
digital copies is that it’s the information
that’s being preserved. A scan of a photograph, or of a letter, preserves the
information therein, suggesting that there’s no fundamental difference between
the original and a good copy. There is some truth in this — otherwise we
wouldn’t be content with those census scans that we all have — but anyone who
considers their artefacts to be treasured memorabilia would disagree.
In Handling
Transcriptions I explained that STEMMA® uses a Resource
entity to describe both digital files and physical items, including any images
of the physical items.
Some interesting fallout from this occurs when sharing such
data. There may be many copies of your data — if you’re so inclined — but only
one copy of the artefacts. When sharing your data, you will most likely be
sharing just the digital contributions, and that means that any association
between artefacts and images thereof must be broken.
If we’re famous then we may decide to bequeath our
collection to a local archive, and presumably they would help with the issues
of organisation and preservation. For the vast majority of us, though, we must learn
how to become micro-archives.
This is a seriously neglected issue in private collections (i.e.
outside of archives, museums, and libraries). I don’t have any answers for how
to preserve our varieties of artefact, or the best practices for cataloguing
them, but we should be learning from those institutions that do this. What I do
know is that we’re not encouraged to record their presence in our family
history collections, or even given the basic tools to accommodate them. The
relentless march of commercial software is steadily turning genealogy into a
digital-only world!
[1] Oxford Dictionaries Online
(http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/artefact
: accessed 15 May 2014), s.v. “artefact”; ‘artifact’ is the
US spelling.
[2] Oxford Dictionaries Online
(http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ephemera
: accessed 15 May 2014), s.v. “ephemera”.
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