December 2024 saw members of the BOCCAHD group come together at Leeds Discovery Centre for to learn about, and explore the potential of, Wikidata for heritage collections. 

Wikidata is the databse that sits behind Wikipedia, so has huge potential to enable data stored there to reach similar global audiences that the encyclopaedia does. Training was led by Stuart Prior from Wikimedia UK who showed us how to edit Wikidata, what the implications might be for connecting collections data. We did a practical task for the Avebury Papers project, by adding each of the stones that make up the site to Wikidata and experimented with how the collections we work with could be represented on the site.

In this workshop we used deaccessioned social history objects from Leeds Museums and Galleries to think through which affective and sensory metadata fields we would want a bespoke collections management system to have in order to more fully capture the contents, meanings and associations of the objects we were working with.

Dr Sophie Vohra from The Sensational Museum invited us to get hands-on and think about how we might embed sensory data in collections management systems to enhance accessibility and engagement.

BOCCAHD's largest event brought together team members with other participants from Leeds and beyond over two days to develop prototype games using data from the Avebury Papers project. 

Dr Fran Allfrey led us through a workshop where we could think creatively with data from the Avebury Papers project. One of the key ideas we thought with during this workshop was "generous interfaces" and how a generous interface might be bespoke to the data it displays.

The second BOCCAHD workshop took place in January 2024. Led by Kate Simpson from the University of Sheffield, participants worked with objects from the David Livingstone Museum's collection to inspire a data physicalisation task. BOCCAHD member, Fran Allfrey, reflects on the workshop:

The BOCCAHD workshop led by Kate Simpson sparked so many interesting avenues for reflection, from how to ensure that forgotten or hitherto systemically erased figures might re-emerge in improved data, to the ways in which when folks in the room use 'human', as an adjective - for instance, a 'more human approach to cataloguing' - we gesture towards something like 'emotional', 'sensory', or 'imaginative'. One idea that was only briefly discussed by the group, but has remained at the front of my mind because it relates to a challenge for the Avebury Papers project that I'm currently working on. This challenge is around how to link, or otherwise represent within a dataset, specific objects with research, events, or related happenings that have been generated by the institution that holds them. For example, how might we link an object with documentation from a past temporary exhibition, an in-house research paper (by a student, volunteer, or staff member, for instance), a commissioned artwork, or the outcomes of an educational workshop? In what contexts might this be desirable? What kinds of audiences might want such materials, and in what format? 

An example of how objects and their stories of interpretation and movement might be - at least somewhat - presented, and the frustrations of systems that don't make full use of linked data possibilities, is in the record for the copper alloy stag from the seventh century Sutton Hoo Mound 1 ship burial, excavated in 1939 and now held by the British Museum. 'Curator's Comments' and 'Bibliographic references' fields suggest further reading; A 'Conservation' field includes records of recent treatments; and an 'Exhibition History' field at least provides space for such documentation, even if it is certainly under-populated. Here, then, is a start. However, only the 'Conservation' entries may be clicked to view more information, while the other data points (reading recommendations and past exhibitions) are plain text. Users may not dynamically move between the stag and the whetstone that it is now affixed to (the accession number for the latter is given, but is plain text), although there is a link to view all 8334 alphabetically-arranged objects from the same findspot. In a similar vein, there is no one-click route between the seventh-century reassembled remains of the Sutton Hoo helmet; and its shining replica, which is displayed next to it in the Museum's physical gallery; or a drawing which features a likeness of the same. 

For the Avebury Papers project, we are commissioning artists to make work inspired by materials in the archive. How might we map any connections between specific objects and an artwork (or artist documentation)? Is this feasible or desirable if the artwork becomes more abstract, or merges together multiple points of inspiration? At what point might an artwork be deemed to be too removed from an original object to propose a direct connection in a catalogue record? Who gets to decide: the artist, or the researchers who might see connections differently? How might we centre objects in such a way that narratives and happenings might be 'pinned' to them, and how might we guide users across such data and objects with varied provenance and relationships to 'truth'? 

Replicating the experience of jumping across hyperlinked data points, I've ended up somewhere somewhat removed from the conversations 'in the room' in York. However, the provocations from the day, around representing the senses and emotion in datasets, object biographies, and rich and complicated contexts have fed into my plans for the next BOCCAHD event. In the spring, I look forward to the group exploring with more granularity the technology that structures our data for public users, and what kinds of narratives are enabled or made difficult by the digital interfaces between objects and audiences.

The first meeting of the BOCCAHD group was held at the University of Sheffield in April 2023. Co-investigator, Arran Rees, shares his reflections about the day:

Coming together for the first time, meeting your new collaborators, who you’ve only emailed or seen as floating heads on MS Teams or Zoom, is always an exciting part of any research project. This was definitely the feeling in the room as the BOCCAHD group met in Sheffield in April 2023 to work out what our mutual interests and shared ambitions for our network of heritage documentation folk.

Treating the day as a completely open session to talk about our interests and establish connections is a luxury a network like this enables. We talked around the room from documenting lived experience against once records, to the potential of affective metadata and sensory descriptions; from museum documentation standards like Spectrum, to dismantling colonially-informed approaches to descriptions and queering catalogues; from linked open data to bespoke and generous databases and interfaces.

There was an energy in the room, an excitement about collection management and documentation that you don’t always get to see. Collective acknowledgement that documentation systems are at the core of how we understand and enable access to heritage collections, and an appetite to understand what a more expansive approach to these systems might mean for us all as professionals and researchers.