The historical society I work for hadn't had a fulltime archivist before me,
and collections were minimally processed if at all before going into
storage. We recently moved into a building that allowed us to unpack and
fully address and organize collections, so your e-mail rings a variety bells
for me.
You may want to see if there are particular collections that would be of
interest to the general public or whoever your mission addresses. If
inquiry or reference requests have been saved, you may look at those to get
an idea of what sort of things would be good to prioritize. If they are
concise collections (generally physically together, manageable in size), you
could try getting interns or recent library/archives grads to handle those
pieces.
At our historical society, we have many donor files in hard copy but not in
our database, and there wasn't a consistent labeling process to identify
items amongst the collections. So we took the physical files and organized
them into our database first, and then worked to reconcile items as we found
them during processing. This is still happening, it's a long process, so my
chief words of advice would be to not allow yourself to get overwhelmed.
Break down the tasks as much as you need, in chunks. I hope your employers
appreciate the magnitude (and benefits!) of this work.
Sincerely,
Astrid M. Drew
Steamship Historical Society
2500 Post Road
Warwick, RI
02886
<http://www.sshsa.org> www.sshsa.org
401-463-3570
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of William Shepherd
Sent: Monday, November 9, 2015 3:28 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MUSEUM-L] Collections Audit/Rebirth
*Apologies for cross posting.*
Hello,
I'm recently started in a new position at a new institution
managing their collection. My predecessor, while a very nice person, fell
far behind on management of the collection. I'm seeing about seven years of
buildup. Everything needs to be rehoused/needs proper storage, virtually
every database record updated with correct locations and information,
hundreds or thousands of records entered into the database that are typed
out in a Word file but not entered into the database, paperwork and
documentation located and updated, as well as rearranging objects in storage
areas. The archives collection is in a bit better condition so this will
only focus on the Museum's mixed physical collection consisting of the usual
human created items, natural history items, photographs, etc. My guess is
there is somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 collection items to be dealt
with.
As I'm making a plan to tackle this massive project I'd be
very interested in hearing from anyone else that has gone through this or a
similar process. I'm tossing around ideas as I sort through things and of
course it all depends on available funds, but I'm thinking the only way to
go is physically shelf by shelf, one by one, try to locate a database or
Word record, update as necessary and rehouse as necessary, rearrange where
possible then move on. This is obviously going to be a huge amount of work
so hopefully I'll come across some funding to get some recent grads but any
success' and pitfalls others care to share would be much appreciated. Thank
you.
William Shepherd
Collections Officer
Swift Current Museum
44 Robert Street West
Swift Current, Saskatchewan
S9H 4M9
Phone: 306-778-4815
Fax: 306-778-4818
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