... The goal is to have a collection of over 4,000 objects digitally
photographed, cataloged and researched by the end of the year.....
To Keely Reenie-Tucker and all her helpful correspondents:
A volunteer emailed the first letter over the weekend (She's on Museum-L
too) and advised that I contribute. I will but only after I copied many
of your posts to serve as the beginnings of a training manual which we
will develop for my museum.
The 4000 posts I believe to be very optimistic. In almost two years since
we implemented PastPerfect, the program says we have 9400 records. That
includes items which were loaned during two traveling exhibits last year.
Between them the volunteer who emails and another active volunteer
contributed over 580 hours of service, primarily helping with entries to
PastPerfect. One volunteer has been working from a temporary catalogue of
photographic negatives which we have from an early photography studio.
She pops in, logs into her stations, and transcribes for an hour or two
whenever she can. She is a former secretary and longs to finish the
project of getting all these photos logged into the program.
She is not doing a complete recording. Because of the computer data
base, she is able to fly over the repetative parts such as donar, date of
acquisition, acquisition number, name of the collection, and we have
function keys dedicated to whether it was a gelative negative or a glass
negative. All are black and white negatives. Her part of the description
is just to repeat what the photographer logged in his records and
occassionally some other information if she knows the individual or their
descendants in the photo. She also lists the old number which the
photographer wrote on the reverse side of every negative. She does list
the size and an approximate date, and now is beginning to list a few
database search items.
The second volunteer works from items that were logged in on written
formats since we opened in 1993, transferring the information stored on
those records.
In both cases, I try to go over their entries and make additional
comments on the search fields.
In most cases we have not gotten any information into the condition
reports fields. While I was trained as an historian with a B. A. and an
M. A., I only seriously entered the museum field informally 10 years ago.
When I first attended conferences and heard references to condition
reports, I knew I did not know what I should say. After several workshops
and some assistance on traveling exhibits we are just beginning to fill
in those blanks.
In March, we received a Epson Expression 1680 scanner which was paid for
with grant funds. At this point we have scanned about 400 of the
negatives and I am beginning to transfer thumbprints to the PastPerfect
program. I find that it takes me 3 minutes to scan a photo and 5-10
minutes to post all the possible sort terms when I transfer the image to
PastPerfect. Other volunteers have begun to assist with scanning the
images and have a numbered step by step guide as to how to proceed. That
frees me to work on other projects while remaining within shouting
distance.
Like one of the persons who responded to you, we feel the most important
thing first is to get every item numbered and inventoried. With
PastPerfect, that process is speeded up as far as the repetitive parts of
the report (ie. donar name, address, type of item according to Chenall,
etc.) But it is still not fast.
Good luck.
Also thanks for your query. I will be on a panel at AAM about using
volunteers in taking care of the artifacts. You are helping me evaluated
the things I need to cover.
Mary Kirby
Historic Upshur Museum
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