The Challenge of Ubiquity in Digital Culture
CHArt 27th ANNUAL CONFERENCE
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The Challenge of Ubiquity in Digital Culture
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Barbara Pezzini
Taxonomy and Contradiction in The Burlington Magazine Online Index
In this paper I will present the new Burlington Magazine Online Index and discuss the issues behind its classification system. The Burlington Magazine, with its juxtaposition of art trade and academia, historicism and aestheticism has occupied a unique role in the art world since it was first published in 1903. From its very beginnings the magazine has produced a detailed printed index and in 2005 it received a grant from the Mellon Foundation to create a cumulative online version of it. The Burlington Index helps to distribute culture by bringing analogue data from the printed magazine into the digital arena and uses social media to promote itself and reach new users. The Index is a groundbreaking project, not just for its wide scope - over a century of material - but also for its highly specialised contents and its open, free for all, access. This is also the first index which includes illustrations and access to images (via JSTOR).
The Burlington Index is now nearly complete and freely available online. How is the Burlington Index structured and what are its models? How its destination for general data users rather than specialised ones (eg. librarians) has influenced its structure? What are its aims and limitations? In the Burlington Online Index are contained both the taxonomic need for order and logic and the strive for embracing contradictory aspects that have been traditionally suppressed in digital systems. The Burlington Index aims to include descriptors rather than exclude them. But, is this openness resulting in a loss of coherence and logic?
This paper fits into the conference’s theme as the discussion of the issues created by open access of the index engages with Bourriaud’s observation on how technologies can bring about a “collective desire to create new areas of conviviality and introduce new types of transaction with regard to the cultural object.” The analysis of the categories used to create the index also ties in with the subjects discussed in the conference, as it considers a digital system as bearer of complexity and contradictions and not a mere conduit of data and information.