The WWW cabinet of curiosities: a serendipitous research tool

This paper proposes that the WWW is able to be fruitfully understood as a research tool when we utilise the metaphor of the cabinet of curiosities, the wunderkammer. It unpeels some of the research attributes of the metaphor as it reveals the multiplicity of connectivity on the web that provides serendipitous interactions between unexpected materials thus bringing new ways of thinking about a given research topic.It explores how the singular research journeys may express themselves so differently that they find a comfortable space for a definition only within an academic cabinet of curiosities. Yet these differences are also made available through utilising an academic search engine in the WWW because it doesn’t literally obey the instruction you have given it. I give examples of methodologies and theories that I have found to be apposite for such serendipity. I show that the narrative of the research journey is a significant contribution to knowledge through explicating a subjective academic narrative in an auto-ethnographic methodological framework.