Skulls, skin and names: The ethics of managing heritage collections data online

Abstract

The care, preservation and display of sensitive cultural heritage materials in museum collections is a well-studied and highly regulated aspect of museum practice. Institutional, national and international guidelines exist to help museums treat these objects with discretion, sensitivity and respect, and ongoing discussions around decolonisation have resulted in growing numbers of these objects being repatriated to the communities from which they originated. However, although there is emerging practice at institutional, local and national levels no such broadly accepted guidelines exist for managing the digital surrogates of these objects which reside in databases around the world. This chapter explores the complexity of managing sensitive data in large repositories, and highlights the need for guidance specifically tailored to the emerging digital spaces.

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