As colonial powers
extended their reach, they send expeditions to those parts of the
world where they might find an “el dorado”. Many of these
expeditions had a dual purpose and expanding the knowledge of the
world was one. When you were lucky, you lived to tell the tale. You
arrived home heavy with notes, artefacts both human, animal, plant
and inanimate. These artefacts were analysed and when done, they
ended up in depots of museums. Museums like the Tropenmuseum.
The Dutch
anthropological museums all got “their” part of these expeditions
and now is the time when thanks to digitisation all the notes and
artefacts can come together. Just bringing them together is already a
lot of fun but it is only by telling the story to the public that it
gains in relevance.
The Tropenmuseum is
really happy with many of the results of their donations of
Indonesian materials; it is the Indonesian Wikipedia where their
material is used most. A project about expeditions may become as
relevant as they are when the first systematic references occur in a
written language.
Digitising the
documents, the photos and combining them in Wikipedia articles is
worthwhile in itself however this is not telling the stories of the
expeditions and the stories of the collections. Telling the stories
is what will make all the material come alive.
The pictures go into
Commons, the subjects in Wikipedia, the sources in Wikisource. Can we
have a Wikistories to tell the story and have a framework for all the
content of the expeditions ?
Thanks,
GerardM
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