Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the digitisation of historical collections affords a range of action possibilities in the present, including new ways of researching collections, rearticulating them with associated knowledges, and recirculating them to different publics.

Paper long abstract:

The exploration of 'digital affordances' is part of a broader AHRC-funded project investigating a range of broader 'Museum Affordances' (see Panel 32) - the action possibilities latent in museum collections, curatorial interventions and exhibition strategies. The focus of this presentation is to explore how the digitisation of historical collections affords a range of action possibilities in the present, including new ways of researching collections, rearticulating them with associated knowledges, and recirculating them to different publics. Insights are drawn from preliminary research conducted with the collections assembled by the colonial anthropologist N. W. Thomas in West Africa between 1909 and 1915. These collections, which include material culture, photographs, sound recordings, botanical specimens, and fieldnotes, were subsequently dispersed to different institutions. The paper considers how, through exploiting the affordances of digital technologies, these disarticulated collections and knowledges can be rearticulated, and recirculated in different ways to different publics, including source communities. This in turn allows us to consider what other action possibilities are latent within the collections, and how they might be activated in the building of relationships and enrichment of society. See details of the Museum Affordances project and N. W. Thomas collections at https://re-entanglements.net