Tuesday 23 November 2010
Ron Brownson
Here is the link to a copyright photograph taken by Mel Hodgkinson on March 10 2007 at Government House in Wellington that has been loaded onto flickr.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/domino_nz/417066925/
The photograph is credited at digitalnz as being an image related to Toss Woollaston, one of whose paintings is displayed on the rooms of this reception room.
It could just as easily be indexed as an image of numerous British royal family portraits displayed on the grand piano at Government House. In fact, the photographs are more recognisable as an image. To discover which Woollaston painting was on display at this official residence in 2007 would require cross-referencing with the Te Papa collection.
How one catalogues source data connected to documents and images always determines how they are electronically indexed. This was the point of my posting the inaccurate Auckland Museum documentation related to my father’s experience as a soldier in Italy. When wrong information is associated with images then it is not always simple to correct it.
Another search result from seeking “Toss Woollaston” at digitalnz brings up Robert Field’s Head of Tilly Frankl in this Gallery’s collection. It gives no reason for the association with Woollaston and only those in the know would realise that he had met her. Yet, how did this sculpture get placed within a “Toss Woollaston” search?
http://www.aucklandartgallery.com/the-collection/browse-artwork/5242/head-of-tilly-frankl
A surprising result is this - if you search digitalnz for Toss Woollaston you only get 98 results. This means that the majority of Woollaston artworks held in New Zealand’s museums are not yet appear to be indexed by digital.nz.
Correcting incorrect data means going back to the source institution and informing them of their error and requesting that the information be updated.