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Hidden Meanings: A Search For The Historical Worldview In The Oberlin College Ethnographic Collection Organizational Systems, Erin Evangeline Allen

Honors Papers

My study will aim at revealing the role of system authors in creating and maintaining catalogue systems for museum collections. These systems, created to organize, structure, and keep track of the material in a museum collection, often hold the theoretical autograph of the people involved in their conception, and are "artifacts in their own right" (Southwood 2003:105). As a result, Kaplan notes, "any residual claims of innocence and objectivity are completely unfounded" (Kaplan 2002:211). To demonstrate, this paper will look extensively at the catalogue systems and reorganizations that have affected the Ethnographic Collection at Oberlin College since its codification in …