At 04:30 PM 6/25/98 +0100, Boylan P wrote:
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>Sender:       Museum discussion list <[log in to unmask]>
>Poster:       Boylan P <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      Re: How new staff knows what old staff has done
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>
>I think this is enormously helpful: in my first museum job I constantly
>referred to the "Ramdom Notes to my Successor" left by David Spalding
>(well known later to many Canadian professionals) throughout my 4 years
>there - and left my own version when I moved on.
>
>Another suggestion is to ensure that samples of handwriting of all kinds
>- specimen labels, notes etc. - are archived for the benefit of future
>curators, registrars and researchers wanting to identify such material in
>the future - though I suppose that eventually technology will finally take
>away that (valuable) source of informqtion in relwtion to historic
>collections!
>
>Patrick Boylan

At a museum at which I was once employed to conduct a systems analysis for
collections management, the staff -- the older staff, in particular --
objected vociferously to having the old accession files replaced by a
digital equivalent. It seems as if accession cards could be attributed to
particular curators by their handwriting or by the style of the typewriter
used to produce them.  From the point of view of the systems analysis, this
information encoded what should have been fielded information identifying
the authorship and dates of the notes. I considered this an important
lesson. I was told that one or several past curators had been regarded as
idiots, and their notes were routinely ignored!

R.Baron
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