You’re scrolling through digitized photographs from Pacific Island nations taken in the mid-20th century, perhaps by visiting anthropologists, maybe by missionaries.
You see a photo of a man and child. (Link to photograph in UC San Diego Library: https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb5666568f) The information says who the photographer was, that it was taken in the Solomon Islands sometime between 1958 and 1961, and that it shows – as you can see – a man, a child, a string bag.
This is the limited kind of metadata, or information about information, Cristela Garcia-Spitz sometimes has to deal with when she digitizes and posts photographs in the Tuzin Archive at the University of California San Diego Library. It’s all that is available to her. Other times she’s luckier: For example, with a photo taken in Malekula, Vanuatu, in the summer of 1981 of a man and child, she was able to work with the photographer and the anthropologist involved so the metadata gives the man’s name, his relationship to the child, and some background on the roles of fathers and children in the community (Link to photograph at UC San Diego Library: https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb4987853m).
The amount of metadata on any object is one of the great challenges as libraries and museums work on digitizing their collections so they can reach a global audience and allow communities to discover more of their cultural heritage.
“I think what I’m probably most excited about, and probably what I’m most worried and concerned about, is the fact that there are so many more eyes on the collections now”, Cristela says. “I wrote an article with my predecessor (former curator Kathryn Creely) called Out of the Box, and it was basically about what happens when you take these things out of the box and put them online and make them available.”
“I think the hope is that we do find their loved ones, or are at least able to share it, so that it’s not just sitting in a box, it’s in the world. But the concern there is, will it cause distress or will it hurt as well as help.”
She mentions a work by artist Stacey Kokaua who combed through some archives, including the Tuzin Archive, and “she did such an incredible job talking through how it could cause sadness to see these images of people who we don’t know their names, ‘are they unloved?’ I think is how she explained it. And I hope to talk to her at some point because a lot of love went into putting those up online. I think the hope is that we do find their loved ones, or are at least able to share it, so that it’s not just sitting in a box, it’s in the world.But the concern there is, will it cause distress or will it hurt as well as help.”
The Tuzin Archive is a collection of books, field notes, photographs and audio material from the Melanesian region, primarily from anthropologists but also from linguists, geologists, even missionaries. Most of it comes from the 1950s-1970s, “which is an interesting time for the Pacific because of when things really started opening up and it was also during the transition to many countries’ independence,” Cristela says. Unlike the collections of many institutions, these items were mostly created by people who worked in the Pacific, not by islanders.
Work to digitize the archive started in about 2008, first with the photography collections, then documents, and finally audio. Each comes with its own set of concerns.
The library knew from the beginning that it wanted people to be able to comment on what they saw, so that was built into the online system. But it also knew it would set different access levels depending on the material.
“We’ve moved beyond just thinking about copyright but thinking also about intellectual property – is this something that’s mine to share, or is it something the community should be able to decide who uses and sees it.”
“We knew there were things that we didn’t want to put online,” Cristela says. “We wanted people to know they exist but we knew that we were going to display the metadata only from the very get-go because of cultural sensitivity or just content that’s not quite ready to be made available, or content that just shouldn’t be online and accessible to anybody.”
Audio recordings, for example, are generally restricted.
“One of the reasons is because there is so much song and dialogue and content,” she says. “There’s a very famous example of a song with a Solomon Islander woman singing. The song got very big and the woman herself never was recognized formally. We’ve moved beyond just thinking about copyright but thinking also about intellectual property – is this something that’s mine to share, or is it something the community should be able to decide who uses and sees it.
“And I don’t know that we’ve found a great balance, but I think that, as we are able to work with more communities, we’ll be able to learn those things.”
Other concerns arise from different practices or worldviews in different eras.
“These items reflect the perspectives, social norms, and biases of the time period in which they were created.”
“In one of our earlier collections sometimes there were what I would say of-the-era photographs that I would call somewhat exploitative – for example, women with their tops on and women with their tops off, same photograph same pose. And I don’t know exactly what the intentions were. I know that was a practice of the day, you could see it in multiple collections. And you don’t want to hide that from the global audience who might be able to add more context to it now, when they see the photos or hear the audio.”
The library explains many of the concerns with its “statement on historical context and cultural sensitivity in collections,” noting: “These items reflect the perspectives, social norms, and biases of the time period in which they were created. … We recognize that the UC Library Digital Collections includes materials that are troubling, discriminatory and racist, and we are critically reflecting on how to address these issues while understanding the place these items hold in history and impact scholarship.”
The library invites people to tell them if there’s something that should be taken down online, something Cristela says has happened a handful of times over the years for the UC San Diego Library Digital Collections website. Similarly, she has received a few requests to add information, especially since she started working with the Digital Pasifik online portal which is specifically focused on linking Pacific islanders with their heritage in institutions around the world.
“The best-case scenarios are when someone has said, ‘I know who that is,’ and we’ve been able to add a name or add more context. I think that’s the reward for all the hard work, it’s a big win, it’s exciting. That’s the hope, I think, with the way their site is built, to engage and get more feedback. And then hopefully get the right eyes on these collections.”
When information is added, the old version of metadata is kept in the system “so there is a record when we decide to change something.”
Occasionally, very occasionally, there is a moment of great joy in a new discovery. Cristela thinks back to her predecessor who had invited a group of travelling Solomon Islanders to the archive.
“And while they were looking through the photographs that we had digitized, one of the Solomon Islanders found a photograph of himself as a child. He never knew that this picture of him existed, and I don’t think he had any other photographs of himself as a child. That’s incredible, to be able to share what was probably sitting in our collections for 20, 30 years, to be able to share that with that person.
“Those are the moments and the connections that I try to keep in mind on why we’re doing the work that we’re doing.”