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服务收藏品包含了1870年至1980年间在该州运营的精神病院的1,600多件物品。它是世界上最大的收藏品之一。由于精神病机构化和社区护理的相对优点仍然存在争议，在线提供所有这些对象的数字化图像，并附有专家历史评论，不仅可以了解患者和工作人员的日常生活以及现在基本上消失的机构提供的护理，而且还有助于促进更好地了解公众对精神卫生政策这一重要领域的辩论。

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.