In the archives of the City of Geneva, there are a lot of letters from the MEG or to the MEG which include information about MEG Objects. Most of these letters have been digitized. By linking the objects to the corresponding letters, the information about the provenance of the objects could be improved.

Datasets

• Metadata of Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève (MEG) collections
• Index général de la correspondance du Musée d'Ethnographie (1900-1952). The letters themselves will be available during the hackathon, but they are not openly licensed

Idea on How to proceed

For this object https://www.ville-ge.ch/meg/sql/musinfo_public.php?id=040434

There is a mention of J. Debarge in the field "Collection particulière".

In the index of letters, there are a couple of letters from Josette Debarge originating from Cameroun in ~1931

Here is a letter about this object.

But the letter is sent to Mosé Yéyap which is mentioned in the old inventory https://www.ville-ge.ch/meg/musimages/registres/Registres_tapuscrits/40434.pdf

Challenges

• The names are not written in the same way (see above : J. Debarge in the MEG Metadata and DEBARGE, Josette, Dr in the index of the letters
• There are a lot of letters, so it is not easy to guess which one has relevant information (maybe the date of the letter and the date of the entry of the object in the collection could help)

Possible Outputs

• A small website which could display the objects and the relevant letters (and link them). Maybe with some additional information about the persons who wrote the letters
• A data table with the possible links
• An extraction of the letters which have information about objects
• ...