Digital Collections: Hearst Museum of Anthropology (UC Berkeley) Opens Digital Portal to its Entire Collection

From UC Berkeley:

UC Berkeley’s Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, whose world-class collections range from Egyptian mummy sarcophagi to Peruvian textiles to Native American baskets, has opened a digital portal to expand public access to its collections of more than 3 million objects, photographs, films and sound recordings.
Two years in the making, the Hearst Museum Portal will enable researchers and the public at large to go online and examine all of the museum’s cataloged objects and much of the accompanying documentation via a user-friendly interface.

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The portal links directly to the Hearst Museum’s database and can be explored using simple Google-like keyword queries as well as more advanced multifield searches.
In particular, the portal is designed to serve people with cultural connections to societies represented in the Hearst Museum’s collections. They include Native Californian educators, spiritual leaders, repatriation coordinators, tribal government officials and artists, who rank among the most frequent visitors to the museum’s archives and storage facilities.
“We are pleased to serve as a resource for Native California across a variety of research areas, and the portal will greatly expand that access,” said Jordan Jacobs, the Hearst Museum’s head of cultural policy and repatriation.
With guidance from the Hearst Museum’s Native American Advisory Council (NAAC), access to images of human remains, funerary objects and objects known as “charm stones” is restricted as part of a greater effort to collaborate with Native American communities.
For example, people seeking to view images of restricted objects via the portal will need to contact the museum to arrange for permission.

Direct to Hearst Museum Portal
Read the Complete Launch Announcement
 

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