When the Data Becomes Meta: Quality Control for Digitized Ancient Heritage Collections

Digitizing analog historical collections has become common practice for institutions with the necessary funds and infrastructure for the process. This endeavor is typically undertaken in isolation or with external assistance, adjusted to the needs and capabilities of the collection-holding institution. Anticipating the ways in which users will access online collections can be difficult. There can be an underlying assumption that they are a uniform target group: professionals with knowledge in the respective fields/periods/languages, and amateurs expected to take these prerequisites into account. However, institutions housing antiquities are as diverse as their viewers, from museums to art galleries, academic institutions and private collections – all with differing priorities regarding form, content, context and meaning of their objects. The implementation of measures must be considered to ensure online presences account for the hurdles and roadblocks to holistic digital access to ancient heritage collections. Digital formats raise issues of web accessibility, language barriers and interoperability, in addition to complications imported from the analog, such as understanding across disciplines and vocabularies. Drawing from a comparative dataset of papyrus-housing institutions in around 40 countries, expanded from Trismegistos, this paper utilizes selected digitized papyrological collections to spotlight their successes and limitations, as well as characteristics common to the digitization of ancient heritage collections. This includes how collections present themselves to audiences of varying digital knowledge and familiarity, and speak to the understanding of multiple disciplines. Other aspects are increased dedication to provenance investigation, offering contextualization of objects and facilitating cross-institutional/-disciplinary research.