When I'm in the field, obviously I keep a field notebook with all kinds of
miscellaneous (and ideally usually redundant) notes.  A while ago I started doing
the same for day-to-day activities in Collections & Research.  At least in theory
we have logs of important things (i.e., fumigations, IPM monitoring checks and
problems, humidity spikes, transactions) as well as procedures for resolving the
minor(?) crises of everyday collections administration (misplaced paperwork, permit
reporting deadlines, policy & procedure debates or misunderstandings amng the
staff, etc.).  But there really wasn't any simple way of knitting them together.

For the first several months I recorded notes just as I do in the field, in
permanently bound cross-section books using a good pencil.  More recently I've
started saving them on the computer (with electronic & hardcopy backup), since the
biggest drawback in utility seemed to be that everything was organized by date.
I'm still of two minds about which system is better.  If this had been done twenty
years ago, I think I'd take elemental pleasure in the long row of bound notebooks
on the shelf.  And I do find that it's easier to browse through a book than a file,
but it's much easier to search the electronic version.  It can be cross-referenced
at need.

I really started this for my own benefit, but I hope its long-term benefit to
future staff would be considerable (hopefully posthumously, since in its original
form it was recorded in manners ill-suited for general consumption).  One of the
real benefits for me has been that it records both what was decided and why (albeit
from a personal standpoint).  Sometimes that reason's less a compelling logic than
force of personality, but it's helpful to know that.  Every once in a while I'll
come across a decision made in the distant past, and it seems completely
hare-brained until the whole (unrecorded) story comes out.

Obviously we leave a considerable paper-trail behind us--accession forms,
transaction records, treatment logs, catalogues, correspondence.  But for the most
part that trail is event-oriented rather than process-oriented.  Process-oriented
records of this kind might help future curators quite a bit.  One word of warning,
however.  It can be a bit daunting to start recording data of this kind.  It's a
constant reminder (and permanent record) of tasks undone, opportunities missed and
procedures completed backwards.

AB

--

Alex Barker
Chief Curator & Director of Science Programs
Dallas Museum of Natural History
PO Box 150349
Dallas, TX 75315-0349
(214) 421-3466 x 244 fax (214) 428-4356
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