ABSTRACT
This chapter looks back over 10 years of putting photograph collections online at the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM), the University of Oxford's museum of anthropology and world archaeology. It discusses ways in which images of historical photography have been translated' online, and the strategies employed by the PRM's curators and project staff in negotiating interactions with collections within a digital environment. Although the PRM was an early leader in digital research projects relating to ethnographic collections, important questions now arise about the long-term relevance and sustainability of these early projects. The Southern Sudan project website, which was published online on 3 January 2006, presents users with the ability to carry out suggested or free text searches and then view thumbnail search results of both photograph and object holdings side by side. The employment of a dedicated scanning technician on the Tibet project enabled a more sophisticated interrogation of the physical objects than either Sudan or Luo websites offer.
