Images of Tibet

Over the past few years, increasing numbers of museums have created websites designed to act as a shop window on their collections, writes Nick Case.
Typically, they were intended to be notice boards giving details of current and forthcoming exhibitions, together with details on how to reach the museum. Often they were created by a number of different people over a period of weeks, months or years, which could lead to inconsistency in appearance and a proliferation of outdated information. Nevertheless, the concept has now become an established part of any museum’s overall marketing strategy.

Now, as the Internet takes an increasingly central role in contemporary life, the purpose and possibility of websites is being explored. Many types of heritage organisation are recognising the benefits of having parts of their collections available online. An online resource can allow an organisation to provide far more information than may be possible in a physical space and make it easier to make connections between different collections, potentially pushing forward the boundaries of research. In a practical sense it can also allow organisations to show collections that are in the storerooms or allow access to people who may not be able to visit.

One organisation that is building such a collection is the University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum. The museum holds a rich collection of over 4,000 historical photographs of Tibet taken by British colonial photographers between 1908 and 1950. Committed to addressing the needs of the research community and the wider public, it has created Tibet Visual History Online, a research-level resource which it has developed in partnership with Oxford ArchDigital, a spin-out from Oxford’s Institute of Archaeology that builds database systems for heritage organisations.

The first phase of this resource comprises 400 scans from the Museum’s Tibet Collections which aims to provide a fully searchable, flexible, interactive and multi-layered website. A major feature is that users can create their own albums, putting material together in previously unimagined ways, allowing them to build their own interpretations. This facility is key to the aims of the project as the refiguring of visual narratives allows alternative histories to emerge. The resource has image-led interfaces and clear instructions throughout for both navigational aids and interactive facilities, to attempt to give the user the confidence to explore their interests.

The photographs record buildings, landscapes, government and religious ceremonies, monastic life and life in the countryside. They also reveal the arrival of modernity, diplomatic endeavours and military expeditions. The same sites and ceremonies were photographed repeatedly by various photographers and photographs were often exchanged, copied and circulated. The database can be easily searched and manipulated.

“The objective is to preserve and make people aware of the historical context of the photograph collections, so we have kept the images in their original condition,” says Head of Photograph Collections and Lecturer in Visual Anthropology, Elizabeth Edwards. “We see this project as the start of an important international resource that will add to the world’s knowledge of Tibet and its recent history.”

‘Tibet Visual History’ is becoming an excellent example of how an online database can develop from augmenting a physical collection to becoming a valuable resource in its own right. Photography collections such as these lend themselves well to electronic presentation, but it is not hard to see the benefits that such websites can bring to all types of collection, whether they are developed for research communities or for the general public.