ENGLAND: THE OTHER WITHIN

Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum

Documentation of artefacts in the Pitt Rivers Museum

Alison Petch,
Researcher 'The Other Within' project

PRM Accession Book VI Pitt Rivers founding collections written in 1920s by Ernest Seymour Thomas

PRM Accession Book VI Pitt Rivers founding collections written in 1920s by Ernest Seymour Thomas

Catalogue card prepared by museum staff for 1949.9.61, a Kashmir shawl donated by Margaret Irvine. This card was probably typed

Catalogue card prepared by museum staff for 1949.9.61, a Kashmir shawl donated by Margaret Irvine. This card was probably typed

English catalogue card showing a pipe bowl 1884.101.72

English catalogue card showing a pipe bowl 1884.101.72

Much of the data given on the Other Within website is taken from the Pitt Rivers Museum's documentation of artefacts. Museum's are often coy about the levels of data that they have about each object in their care. This Museum's collections are very well documented, copious records have been kept since 1884 when the Museum was founded. This section of the website gives details about this documentation work between 1884 and 2008, to allow the data which is given elsewhere to be set into context.

All museums need to record certain facts about the artefacts in their collections. Today there are agreed standards for museum documentation set by the Collections Trust (Museum Documentation Association), SPECTRUM in the UK as well as internationally agreed standards like Dublin Core metadata. The Pitt Rivers Museum has always recorded certain key facts for each artefact, these were first recorded into accession registers, then also onto two card catalogue systems (one classified by provenance, one by typology) and since 1985 on computerised databases. Museum documentation in the PRM meets national and international standards and the Museum is believed to have some of the best documented ethnographic collections in the world.

The extracts given below are taken straight from the published Annual Reports of the Museum which have been published annually between 1893 and 2008 and comprise all the references to documentation in this source. Note: Between 1893 and 1937-8 the phrases 'the Curator' or 'I' both refer to Henry Balfour

Part 1 1888-1958

Part 2 1959-1996

Part 3 1997-2005

Further Reading

Alison Petch. 2007 [with David Zeitlyn, Frances Larson] 'Social networks in the Relational Museum: the case of the Pitt Rivers Museum' Journal of Material Culture vol. 12 (3) November 2007 pp.211-239
Alison Petch. 2006 ‘Counting and Calculating: Some reflections on using statistics to examine the history and shape of the collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum’ Journal of Museum Ethnography, 18: 149-156
Alison Petch. 2004 'Collecting Immortality: the field collectors who contributed to the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford' Journal of Museum Ethnography 16 pp 127-139
Alison Petch. 2003 'Documentation in the Pitt Rivers Museum’ Journal of Museum Ethnography, No. 15 pp 109-114
Alison Petch. 2002 ‘How to find out what treasures there are in the Pitt Rivers Museum’ Museum Ethnographers Group Newsletter January 2002
Alison Petch. 2002 ‘Today a computerised catalogue - tomorrow the world’ Journal of Museum Ethnography No. 14, pp. 94-99
Alison Petch. 2000 'Computerizing the Forster ('Cook'), Arawe, and Founding Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum', Pacific Arts, nos. 19/20 (July), pp. 48-80. [with Jeremy Coote, Chantal Knowles and Nicolette Meister]
Alison Petch. 1999 Cataloguing the Pitt Rivers Museum founding collection. Journal of Museum Ethnography 11 1999 pp 95 - 104