Applying Records in Contexts in Portugal: the case of the scientific correspondence from António de Barros Machado and Dora Lustig archive

Abstract

The scientific exchange correspondence of the Dundo Museum Biology Laboratory (Angola), included in the archive of António de Barros Machado (1912–2002) and Dora Lustig (1907–1986), constitutes a valuable repository of information for the history of contemporary science, particularly in the field of natural sciences—botany, entomology, mammals, ornithology, primates, reptiles, termites, zoogeography, zoology—and of biology. This paper describes the application of the Records in Contexts model to the correspondence collection, with the aim of representing two realities: its production context and the relationships between scientists. The exploration of the model sought to understand its fundamentals and, simultaneously, model the information, starting by identifying the entities, attributes and relations needed for the collection representation scheme. This study resulted in a modelling exercise of the relations between 11 correspondents and the director of the Dundo Museum Biology Laboratory, Barros Machado, regarding the work on the museum collections which culminated in the publication of scientific articles in Publicações Culturais da Companhia de Diamantes de Angola [Cultural Publications of the Diamond Company of Angola]. In the future, it is proposed to apply the same scheme to the description of the remaining scientists in the epistolary collection.