Digital curation : Encouraging disciplinary digressions and diversions

Abstract

Data generated by current research provide exciting new dimensions to existing archives, enabling the transformation of these historical materials. The digital space provides a platform in which this shapeshifting can manifest. This chapter explores these possibilities by using the methodology of an object study conducted on an archival holding of the University of Cape Town (UCT) – a small medicine chest housed in the Manuscripts and Archives (M&A) Department as part of a larger collection of papers called the BC666 Floyd Family Papers. Because this little chest exhibits characteristics that fall outside those privileged by the library’s categorisation systems and search engines, it has been rendered somewhat invisible in the institution. This chapter uses the chest as a prompt and a provocation to consider where else in the institution knowledge has similarly been rendered invisible by the taxonomic systems utilised in its various departments, and it explores the role of digital curation (and platforms such as Omeka S) in expanding the limitations of disciplinary frameworks.