Cataloguing Culture

In examining how the technologies of museum bureaucracy – the ledger book, the card catalogue, the database – operate through a colonial lens, Cataloguing Culture shines a light on access to and the return of Indigenous cultural heritage.

Hannah Turner is an information and museum studies scholar, and is an assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of British Columbia. She has published in journals such as Museum Anthropology, Knowledge Organization, and Cataloging and Classification Quarterly. From 2018 to 2019 she was a lecturer in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester.

Forrest Pass, Curator, Exhibitions and Online Content at Library and Archives Canada:
Turner has made an important contribution in reminding museum professionals and museum enthusiasts alike that institutional memory in all its physical forms can shape collective memory in unexpected ways: museum collections document not only the lives and cultures of their “subjects,” but also those of museum staff, whose interests and biases underlie even the most mundane of museological practices.

Heather George, University of Waterloo:

"Turner’s work highlights important historical and contemporary considerations about a specific area of museological practice which has often been neglected in the field of museum studies and material culture."

Alissa Cherry, research manager, Museum of Anthropology at UBC:
Cataloguing Culture is much needed inspiration for museum professionals and information managers to reconsider the nomenclatures and lexicons applied to Indigenous material culture. It’s a valuable resource for understanding how respectful, well-informed naming can be a meaningful step toward reconciliation. Words matter and must be chosen wisely.

Alison K. Brown, Personal Chair in Social Anthropology, University of Aberdeen:
Cataloguing Culture is a significant reflection upon the colonial ideologies embedded in the classification processes of museums. Truly illuminating.

Jane Anderson, co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Cultural Property:
This is by far one of the most exciting and original examinations of the history of ethnographic museums I have come across.