Presenting Data

How knowledge is presented is often just as important as what knowledge is being presented.

The Omeka system that this exhibition is built on uses an industry standard schema called the Dublin Core for describing online resources. The adoption of this collaborative designed schema means that it simplifies and suggests/promotes an universalisation of core terms that can to be used to describe and share catalogue based items.

When attempting to use this framework for this project I had a collection of terms I wanted to include as metadata but could not do so as the only option for customisation was the 'Item Type' field.

This limitation in functionality led to me attempting to adopt a custom tag modifying facility to include my own metadata terms. It was not successful. It would seem there is little space for the recording of unknown data. Perhaps it is not because it is ‘unknowable’ as suggested but because it’s very inability to be classified would create fields that seemed too random/chaotic in a structual sense.  

Focus on Catalogue

In this exhibition it is the catalogue itself that is the focusof the collection, not the image of the item. However as the Omeka platform used to create this collection does not allow the alteration or additions to its core meta data the following fields were added or considered for inclusion:

Is it on Display?

The field Is it on Display? is included within the body of text for items to encourage audiences to consider the meaning, nature and perhaps more importantly the value of incomplete knowledge as opposed to no knowledge.

Miscellaneous

How useful is any field defined as miscellaneous?

This catchall is certainly most likely to be unhelpful when used to capture extra data from un-institutionalised experts linked to object histories. Does miscellaneous as a field suggest an existing hierarchy to the value of data imposed by the database creator?

Perhaps it is more useful to include terms such as ‘profane’ and ‘sacred’ as most objects appear to exist in all human societies in either of these two categories.

Extra effort in figuring out how to recognise alternative ontological and abstract constructs would benefit such a classification system and reduce feelings of western bias and thus ideological ceilings in the schema.  For example, how would we store the ‘number’ Pi or infinity as a concept? Do we need an Item type of ‘Idea’? The Dublin Core includes ‘Event’ as an Item-Type which suggests a level of conceptual leeway in the imagination of its architects.

These are just some of the question which this exhibition hopes to provoke discussion around.

Additional Categories Proposed

• Open (Public)
• Open (Private)
• Sacred
• Organic
• Is Digital Only
• Is Analog (Non Digital Material)
• Is Surrogate
• Guardianship (Belongs to)
• Custodian (Is with)
• Sovereignty (Lies With)