Reading the Objects: Developing Online Personal Stories from Australia's 'Museums of Madness', 1870-1980

维多利亚博物馆的精神病学服务收藏收藏了1600多件来自1870年至1980年间在该州运营的精神病院的物品。它是世界上最大的同类藏品之一。由于精神病院和社区护理的相对优点仍然存在争议，在网上提供所有这些物品的数字化图像，并辅之以专家的历史评论，不仅将有助于了解患者和工作人员的日常生活，以及机构提供的护理现已基本消失，而且还将有助于促进就这一至关重要的精神卫生政策领域进行更有见地的公众辩论。

Museum Victoria's Psychiatric Services Collection contains over 1,600 objects from mental hospitals that operated in the state between 1870 and 1980. It is one of the largest collections of its type in the world. As the relative merits of psychiatric institutionalization and community care remain controversial, making digitized images of all these objects available online, accompanied by expert historical commentaries, will not only throw light on the daily lives of patients and staff and the care offered in institutions now largely vanished, but it will also help promote a better informed public debate about this vital area of mental health policy.