Mapping Archival Connections 

This project examines how archival silence is constructed and represented not through the physical contents of archives but through their catalogue records, which function as the primary interface between archives and the public. Focusing on Australian collecting institutions this study interrogates metadata as a legacy technology: a system of controlled vocabularies, schemas, and standards developed for bibliographic purposes that continues to structure archival visibility in the digital age. While design and digital humanities scholarship has emphasised “opening up” the archive through generous interfaces, such approaches often treat metadata as a neutral constraint to be supplemented or compensated for. By contrast, this project argues that metadata itself is an epistemological technology, one that encodes institutional practices, cultural hierarchies, and conditions of accessibility. Drawing on network analysis of catalogue records, this study maps connections between individuals and collections to show how archival significance emerges not only from the physical extent of holdings but also from their relational position within metadata structures. In doing so, it situates archival silence not simply as a by-product of omission or design limitations but as an outcome of the bibliographic  and archival principles embedded in cataloguing systems. ​​