9.04.2017
Shunsuke Yamashita
Research Division of Museum Education and Museum Media, Hokkaido University Museum
Title: The raw research materials and the university museum
Abstract:
In contrast to the museum collections of specimen and cultural artifact, various “raw research materials”: photos, films, sound recordings and other documents produced by researchers, have not been in the sufficient use and left away in the background. These “raw materials” have some unique characteristics, one of which is being hard to deal with; they are found in large amount; their provenance is derived from various scientific fields; apart from historical value, most of them are difficult to evaluate in the future scientific use. We have seen some projects to archive these materials, but in a slow progress. We have invested a lot of resources to organize and digitize the materials, and then to make various museum products and contents from them as outcomes of the archive projects, though the situation changes little. With limited resource in the museum, these raw materials should struggle for survival against other established-valued collections.
Here, we should contrive additional/alternative outcomes for the archival projects of the raw research materials making use of their uniqueness. Furthermore, university museums have various resources besides collections. We have the place where various people with talents could get together, we have students as targets of education, that is to say, “raw materials” could be educational materials for practice, and students could be collaborators with new idea, and then we are the unique social existence which allows us to carry out experimental museum activities with research aims.
