The Digital Orientalist has just published a new piece by ChinaComx postdoc Damian Mandzunowski: titled “Digital Curatorship, Handling Special Collections, and Lessons Learned from My Pursuit of Historical Photographs of People Reading in China”, the article discusses Damian’s ongoing collection effort of historical photographs of people reading in China. From the first paragraph:
The premise behind this piece is simple: to show how even basic digital tools (such as digital curatorship, a website, and a system of tags) can help in finding new viewpoints for our research, especially in moments of crisis or doubt. When the initial plan for the direction of my own doctoral thesis was turned upside down by the restrictions imposed by the COVID pandemic, I was forced to go back to the drawing board. Soon, I re-discovered a previously put-aside collection of sources—historical photographs—and I was able to create a digital framework for easy and stimulating file management, which proved to be of substantial aid in my research transition. In the process, I learned much about best practices of digital curatorship and the handling of special collections. Thus, in this post I introduce the thinking and work behind, and also lessons drawn from, my repository of historical photographs titled “Reading in China Photographed".
Read the whole piece here!