Hi Everyone,
The Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum keeps rough institutional files. I have no formal guidelines for collecting, but annually I grab copies of things like our newsletters, event invitations, posters advertising the newest exhibits, art show programs, and fliers for our kid camps. I'm certainly no archivist, but I try to keep up on what would tell our story if we did an exhibit on us (that's sort of my rule of thumb from my curatorial mind.) That's how things like kids camp t-shirts, our annual buggy-saver pin, and the rifle we're selling as a fundraiser have become part of our institutional "files" or history. I don't know that what we're doing would work for every museum, but it does work for us. Now if we just had an archivist to handle it all...
As for exhibit files - yikes! We have no formal, museum-wide collection (or consensus) on what is kept. I would be willing to bet that our Exhibits Department keeps files, the Education Department keeps files, the Development Department keeps files, and I know I do for the Curatorial aspect. There SHOULD be some sort of institutional file kept on exhibits as well, but we haven't embarked on that yet. I would love to hear from someone on the list who has a good system to share!
Cathy Osterman
Curator of Collections
CFD Old West Museum
Cheyenne, WY
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2010 10:00:42 -0700
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] Registrarial files vs. institutional archives
To: [log in to unmask]
========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).Please reply to the list, I would be interested in responses as well!
Thank you -
Liz N. Clevenger, MA, RPA
Curator of Archaeology
(415) 561-5086
Presidio Archaeology Lab | www.presidio.gov/history/archaeology | (415) 561-ARCH info | (415) 561-5089 fax
The Presidio Trust | P.O. Box 29052, San Francisco, CA 94129
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From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kathy Haas
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 1:36 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MUSEUM-L] Registrarial files vs. institutional archives
For space and sanity reasons we are considering going through our registrarial files, particularly the old exhibition files, and sorting out material that is not connected to collections, such as guest lists for opening events etc. We realize, however, that much of this material is important for institutional history and should be stored separately rather than discarded. We do not currently have a true institutional archive and I was wondering if any of the folks on the list who do have institutional archives, formal or informal, would be able to share guidelines on what you decide to keep (a.k.a where to draw the line between history and junk) and how you decide where things live (active files vs. archives).
Many thanks,
Kathy Haas
Katherine Haas
Assistant Curator
Rosenbach Museum & Library
2008 Delancey Pl.
Philadelphia, PA 19103
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