Linking the narrative to the digital archive: a potential new model for history and publishing

Ernest Westlake (1855-1922) was an amateur English geologist who went to Tasmania in 1908-1910 to collect Aboriginal stone implements. He formed a collection of more than 13,033 artefacts and spoke to more than 90 people, including Aboriginal people. Rebe Taylor studied the Westlake Papers, held in the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Natural History Museum, Oxford for her PhD, and will soon (with Mike Jones and Gavan McCarthy) publish the entire Westlake Papers online. Rebe’s annotations of Westlake’s digitized papers are more than physical descriptions, they provide context and meaning: this ‘archive guide’ is also a ‘history’. But Rebe wants to also publish a narrative history of Westlake in which the references to the archive link to digitzed images. Could this be a new model of history writing and publishing? This is a history, but the narrative is compartmentalized within the descriptions of the papers. Can Rebe turn this around, and publish a narrative history in which the endnotes link to Westlake’s digital archive? Join her on a journey into possible new way of historical writing and publishing.