Adventures in Collections Management

Baskets and How We Store Them

2011-03-31T15:41:00.000-07:00

This last academic quarter I had the opportunity to teach a class in the Museum Studies program here at Central Washington University. While I work with students as interns all the time, teaching a class was a whole new experience. I had the privilege of teaching a course on Registration and Collections Management, which is what I do every day!

My goal for the course was to teach the students practical fundamentals, and what better way to do that than with hands on projects? The basket collection was an immediate candidate. The baskets are beautiful and likely to be handled frequently for exhibit and research. The students were tasked with a four part assignment: Complete a catalog form, a condition report, rehouse and support the basket, and enter the information they gathered into the museum database.

The rehoused baskets on carts.

All students were required to make a custom sized box from archival cardboard and support the basket if necessary. Many of the baskets chosen for the project are wide, shallow baskets for which we needed to construct supports to help prevent the sides from slumping. Gravity is a mighty foe which must be fought with….

…custom carved blocks of ethafoam.

Carving foam to match the curve of a basket proved to be a very tricky proposition, but the students were up to the task. Not all baskets required such specific mounts. Some were fine without external supports.

This flat bottomed basket is very stable as it is. A handling tray lined with ethafoam prevents sliding and accidental bumping into other baskets on shelves.

This unique piece was too nearly flat for the sort of carved supports which worked best for other items, but small bumpers made of ethafoam tube cut length wise was just about perfect for supporting the basket and preventing movement in the box.
Some pieces, however, proved too difficult to build a mount for in the limited class time dedicated to the project and stop-gap measures were put in place.

The ring at the base of this basket prevents the basket from shifting in the box and more equally distributes the stress at the base, but does nothing to alleviate warping that may already be occurring due to gravity. This basket will receive further attention before going back into storage.

Through this assignment, 16 baskets from the collection were thoroughly documented and now have housing which will protect them for years to come. Additionally, 16 museum studies students now have the experience of creating a custom storage mount for important museum objects. I declare that to be a success all around.

Picture a Museum Day!

2011-03-17T13:07:00.000-07:00

Today is Picture a Museum Day on flickr and Twitter. So I thought I would share some behind the scenes photos from around the museum.

The white board in the museum office contains information about upcoming exhibits, and, today, has the tenets of the museum's mission written on it to help us think about educational programming to develop for school groups.

Into the workroom, where we put together many of our exhibits. This wide format printer and Mac are where all the text panels and labels we develop come from.

And where we keep our vinyl cutter and rolls of colored vinyl. Those exhibit titles on the wall? Come from here.

Not to mention risers and plexi mounts not currently in use.

When they're not in the gallery, we keep our display cases in our work space, or where ever we can find the room.

In our archives room, we keep, well, archives. This collection is from L.H. Walker, a collector and doctor who lived in Ellensburg.

In all of our spaces, we keep dataloggers which taken a reading of the temperature and relative humidity every 90 seconds. This one is in the collections room.

From the collection: Crepe paper dolls representing cultures around the world and mythological figures. They were made by student teachers here at CWU in the 1940s and 1950s.

From the collection: A row of stereoscopes.

Display cases in the collections room - we keep them everywhere!

After taking these photos, I climbed into our Wenas Creek Mammoth display to change the lights (which had burned out). I left some very realistic boot prints in the dirt! It's a bit nerve wracking to be stepping around ancient mammoth bones (yes! that's a real bone!) but it's just another day in the life of the collections manager. And while we had the case open, a quick picture of the display from the back - the secret entrance.

Happy Picture a Museum Day!

Sharing Collections

2010-07-21T11:28:00.001-07:00

Part of my motivation in starting this blog was to share a peek of what behind the scenes looked like for a collections person. My favorite things to share are cool objects from the collection, and box making. Because making boxes, or object mounts more generally, is one of my favorite activity. One of my goals, once the collection move was completed, has been to photograph our collection objects and get those photos online, so that you all can see what I get to see everyday, and so that I can learn more about them from people who know more than me! Because I'm always looking to expand my knowledge about the collections.

This past week I've begun uploading some photos to Flickr. Why flickr? It's fairly cheap, easy to get access to, and you can comment on it! Also, I've seen that other museums, like the Magnes Museum have been sharing their collections there. So I've sent out a trial balloon - uploading 408 images of our collection.

Agates from the Bentley Collection
387 photos of beautiful agates.

Baskets from the Collection
An incomplete photoset - it will be expanded as we photograph more of our baskets. But baskets are a wonderful and important aspect of our collection, and we believe that the more we can learn about them, the greater the stories we can tell.

And now, a question: What sort of objects would you like to see from our collection? What interests you most?

Crash course in mount making

2010-04-06T10:00:00.000-07:00

Because we are a small museum, I end up wearing many hats. In addition to being collections manager, I also dabble in exhibit production and installation. To that end, I've begun to learn how to make mounts for objects on exhibit.

Last year, through a small grant from the University, the museum was able to purchase a heating element and some plexi glass. This year, as we began to develop our exhibits in house, we started to really use the tools we had on hand.

The heating element and our very high tech method of lining up and stabilizing plexi - lumber with lines drawn on it.

The rod in the heating element gets very very hot, and the plexi, when placed above it, softens and becomes pliable, allowing us to bend and manipulate the material. When I began experimenting with the heater and plexi, I used some 1/2" plexi we had laying around. Unbeknownst to me, 1/2" plexi is really tricky stuff to work with. I quickly discovered the trickiness - the plexi wound strain against the bend lines, causing striations.

I had better luck working with our 1/8" plexi, which is much easier to deal with. Seeking guidance, Andy Granitto, Curator of Exhibitions at the Yakima Valley Museum offered to give myself and programming manager, Angie Koch some pointers. Which we gladly took him up on.

Armed with my new, increased understanding of mountmaking, I was faced with my first challenge - mount a pipe in the middle of an exhibit case, preferably so it would look more or less like it was floating. After a couple of sketches, I decided that a tall, freestanding shelf would serve our needs. So that's what I made from plexi.

I embedded the bottom of the stand in an ethafoam block to provide a more stable base. The pipe is attached to the stand through use of monofilament. The process was definitely a learning experience, but it's very exciting to be able to achieve a professional look in house.

A Mammoth Undertaking

2010-04-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, we are milking that pun for all it's worth. And maybe more...

In any case, we've gone a little mammoth crazy around here. If you're not local, you may not have heard about the Wenas Creek Mammoth, which was discovered a few years ago about 35 miles south of campus. It's kind of a big deal. Several large bones have been unearthed, including a humerus, femur and vertebrae. The project was even featured in the History Channel's Journey to 10,000 BC (the only link on the History Channel website seems to be to their video shop - but at least it has a description).

And now, the Wenas Creek Mammoth project will be our inaugural exhibit of our Window on Central series, small exhibits which showcase work being done on and around campus. The exhibit itself will be featured in our hallway facing corner display case, but a mammoth calls for something a little more... dramatic. Like a full size mammoth in the lobby.

And how does one create a full size mammoth? In this case, interim museum director Bill Wood enlarged and refined artist's Carl Buell's rendering of the mammoth and separated it into sections we can print with our 24" plotter. Once printed, the strips were cut down to fit on pieces of foam core and then glued to the foam core. Then we reassembled the whole thing on the lobby wall. No small project!

We started near the front and worked out.

Bill Wood places the final tusk piece.

When it was all done, we put together this little video of the process.

Definitely a lot of fun, and a very cool thing to have in the lobby.

Class Project Part 2: Rehousing a Peruvian Knit Bag

2010-03-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

A while ago, I mentioned that CWU's Curation and Collections Management class is working with some of our textiles. Part of their assignment included working with me to rehouse the object they chose.

Using a series of videos from the Minnesota Historical Society as our guide, we set out to house the textiles. The first piece we did was a small knitted bag, probably from Peru.

The bag had two major needs: a new tag to replace the fading ink on its current tag, and some padding, to relieve pressure on the creases that had formed from being stored flat for many year.

Our first step was to relabel the object. To do so, I first removed the old tag, very carefully, so as not to pull on the knit stitches of the fabric. Meanwhile, Taylor, a student in the class, wrote the catalog number on a piece of twill tape with an Identi-pen; this will be our new label.

Sewing labels to textiles is always a very delicate procedure. The sewing needle and thread need to be very carefully placed between the thread or yarn of the textile that needs to be labeled. To sew down this label, I tacked both ends of the label to the bag without tying knots that might pull on the fibers and cause stress or damage.

We then padded out the bag with some unbuffered acid free tissue paper. In this rather unscientific process, we crumple some tissue paper and place it inside the bag, giving it some bulk and taking some pressure off of the creases that have developed from years of being stored flat.

We then placed the stuffed bag on another sheet of unbuffered acid free tissue paper which will serve as a handling sling, allowing us to easily lift the bag into and out of the box in which it will be stored. In this case we also added a small pillow to stabilize the delicate 'handle' on the bag.

In the interest of space, many textiles will be stored in a single box. Each piece will have a tissue paper sling, and a larger muslin sling will allow us to take all the pieces out of the box at the same time.

Finally, the box is closed up and put back into storage until the textile is needed for research or exhibit.

Each of the students in the class had a different textile to work with, and each faced different challenges to housing it appropriately. By the end of the quarter, each piece was successfully rehoused and readied for storage. A very successful project!

And we're back!

2010-03-26T10:43:00.000-07:00

We keep ourselves pretty busy around here. There's been a lot going on - new exhibits, learning new techniques, installing a mammoth in the lobby. Yep. Full size mammoth in the lobby. It's awesome.

More content coming over the next weeks.

Photo Friday: Beyond Black and White

2010-02-26T09:09:00.000-08:00

It's been a crazy month here at the Museum of Culture and Environment. A week ago we opened our second exhibit: Beyond Black and White: The Stories Behind Our Masks. We're especially excited about the exhibit for two reasons: it features lots of amazing masks from our own collection and we were able to work with CWU's Diversity Education Center.

The photo above shows our two tigre masks in their case, and you can see the reflection of the toro mask in the reflection. In the background are 20 masks created by students in conjunction with the Diversity Education Center.

From a collections standpoint, this exhibit was our first real try at mounting objects for exhibit, and we went for a fairly low tech approach. The tigre masks are supported by a custom carved block of ethafoam, with a small piece of volara under the chin to cushion the pressure point. Simple, but effective. Some of the other pieces were much trickier.

Class Project, part 1

2010-02-05T13:21:00.000-08:00

One of the really neat things about having a museum as part of a university, particularly a university with a museum studies program, is that students have a chance to participate in the collections work. Every year, the museum studies program offers a class on curation and collections management. As part of that class, the students choose an object to research, catalog, and rehouse, if appropriate.

This year, the students are working on a collection of textiles. The textiles have not been researched or housed. In fact, when they were moved last year, they were in a stack in a box. That stack was transferred to the compactor storage, where it's stayed for the last year.

To prepare for class today, I took the textiles from storage and laid them out in the collections workroom. The students each choose a piece to research and rehouse.

I'm really glad the class will be working with these textiles. They need new storage - the flat storage is putting a lot of stress on the fibers, particularly on the knit pieces, which are meant to be three dimensional. I'm also glad these pieces are being examined, because I discovered that the ink used to mark the pieces is fading, in some cases quite badly.

So I'll be replacing those labels that are fading before we finish this project completely. It should be very interesting to see what sort of information the students can find on these pieces.

Clearing out the Gallery

2009-12-28T11:48:00.000-08:00

Our first exhibit closed on December 19th. Over the past week, I've been engaged in taking it down, or deinstalling it. With 140ish silk fish and 60+ photos, that's a lot of material to taken down. This is what the gallery looked like on the last day of the exhibit. Very full, very vibrant.

When taking down the exhibit, the first thing I did was to re-attach the tags to each of the hanging fish. Then I went around, cutting down the thread we'd used to hang the fish with. After recording any changes to the condition of the fish, I returned them to their original boxes and will be repacking those boxes inside their crates when all the fish are down.

The second step has been to take down the framed photos. I noted any condition changes and repacked the images. Thankfully, this didn't involve going up and down a ladder countless times, like preparing the fish did. All in all, the process has gone really smoothly, and I expect to finish deinstalling tomorrow. Here's what the partially deinstalled gallery looks like right now (click on the image to get to a larger version).

Note all the hanging threads we used for the fish, and the stick-um on the gallery walls from the labels. We'll deal with gallery clean up last.

Photo Friday: Petrified Wood Projectile Point

2009-12-11T14:00:00.000-08:00

I've spent a lot of time with archaeological lithics in my life. As an undergraduate, I spent 3.5 years working with and studying lithic debitage. In the collection here, we have about 6000 pieces of chipped stone tools - projectile points and scrapers, mostly. This week I've been photographing some projectile points and processing photos that our intern, Leila, took earlier this month.

I was really struck by the beauty of these tools. They're made from a variety of materials. Around here, you sometimes see projectile points worked from petrified wood. There's quite a bit of petrified wood in the area. There's even a petrified forest nearby (which has a pretty neat museum/interpretive center down the road from it). I think it's just wild how a tree becomes fossilized and then becomes a tool when worked by a skilled craftsperson.

Photo Friday: New Acquisition

2009-12-04T10:28:00.001-08:00

Since the Museum of Culture and Environment began running workshops last spring, we've had higher visibility. Over the summer we received three new donations. This piece is one of them. After some delay, we've attached a label to it and it is now fully integrated into the collection.

At the moment, we don't have a great deal of information about piece, except that the owner before the donor may have been a librarian in Peru. Intriguing!

Photo Friday: Outside the Museum

2009-11-20T08:37:00.001-08:00

I stepped outside on Tuesday afternoon to get some air and see daylight (occupational hazard of working with collections? Basement or windowless office.). The daylight was exceptionally beautiful - sun from the west, clouds in the east. So I ran back to my office, grabbed the camera and snapped a few photos before the light disappeared.

Photo Friday: Polar Bear Pendant

2009-11-13T13:36:00.001-08:00

I skipped ahead out of the lithics this week and took pictures of some of our smaller Arctic type objects. This piece, a carved polar bear head pendant, was probably carved for sale. It's grouped with three other carved for sale type pieces including a napkin ring, a letter opener, and a small seal. I love the heads flanking it on the right and left. Seals, maybe? And also the tongue detail - very red and interesting!

Photo Friday: Mortar/Bowl

2009-11-06T10:54:00.000-08:00

The major collections projects at the moment are somewhat less photogenic than the process of packing and moving were.

We're doing an inventory. Moving and unpacking was a group effort which involved many people, and sometimes lines of communication get crossed. Right now we're working to make sure that everything is where it ought to be and that our database reflects that.

At the same time, we're using our new Nikon camera to take high quality photos of the collection. We're starting with our mortars and pestles and moving on to the natural history collection. Here's a photo of a bowl or mortar made of volcanic rock:

This piece was collected in Idaho. According to its catalog record, the donor "worked on it" suggesting that he modified it in some way from how he found it. But what precisely was done is hard to tell. It may have been a chunk of volcanic rock, completely unformed, or it may have had the suggestion of a bowl. Another mystery to speculate on.

We've arrived

2009-10-06T09:58:00.000-07:00

College of the Sciences Dean Kirk Johnson and CWU Trustee Patricia Notter cut the ribbon.

The Museum of Culture and Environment at Central Washington University is officially open. When I began this blog more than two years ago, the museum didn't even have an official name. It didn't have a gallery. It didn't have a webpage. What it had was the dedication of some volunteers and an academic department, 35 years of history, and one new full time employee.

We've come a long way in these two years.

Guests view the exhibit for the first time.

We opened on September 25th, 2009 with a crowd of nearly 200 people touring the gallery (Link to Facebook photo album.). The opening exhibit, River of Memory: The Everlasting Columbia, on loan from the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center, has been really an excellent first exhibit for us. It truly combines the themes of culture and the environment by exploring the history of a river that people have impacted for thousands of years. The Museum even added a small component to the exhibit, showing some of our net weights and talking about fishing on the Columbia.

Net sinkers and anchor weights on display.

We've come so far in just a couple of years, but we have farther to go yet.

In the meantime, I hope to get back to talking about collections work on a regular basis soon here. And I hope you can come visit us! River of Memory runs through December 17th. We're open Wednesday through Friday 2 to 6 pm and Saturday 10 am to 3 pm. Parking is free on campus after 4:30 pm on weekdays and all day Saturday.

Too busy, can't blog

2009-09-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

The opening is tomorrow at 4 pm! (Read the official press release.) We have been busy here the past few days (busy is an understatement, it's been a madhouse! But in a good way.).

I've got to get back to work, but here's a neat photo of one of the spawning salmon.

Swimming with the fishes

2009-09-14T15:34:00.000-07:00

The crates for our first exhibit - River of Memory: The Everlasting Columbia - arrived on September 1st.

7 of them! Four and a half crates holding 68 images and panels to go up on the walls, one holding the opening panel, and one holding 144 silk fish. I just updated the MCE facebook page to say how excited I am about the fish and I got a request for photos. Well, I can certainly oblige. But a little about how exhibits travel.

This exhibit originated at the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center and has toured the Northwest. You've already seen how you move an exhibit: in custom built crates.

When the crates arrived, the first thing we did was... nothing. We moved the crates into our space and then let them sit. They sat for 48 hours so that they could acclimate to the climate at the museum (okay, they sat longer than 48 hours - I had a bit of a fight with some of the screws holding the crates on, and there was a holiday weekend). Once opened, the next step is to unpack and prepare a condition report for each individual piece.

A condition report is an individual examination of each object to provide a baseline. So we know that when the MCE received X object, it had a chip at the bottom right corner and a scratch in the upper right, 2 inches from the corner, for example. That way the lending institution knows what happens where. Condition reporting can be time consuming, especially with over 200 pieces to process. This is what it looked like when I was working on the images:

I would keep the report with the image until the image was moved into the gallery. When I completed the images, I moved on to the silk fish. The fish are beautiful, and the condition reports are pretty easy, since they're almost all in excellent condition. The fish are made from silk, painted by artists, and are meant to be hung from the ceiling. They're going to be amazing and dramatic. They range from quite small (just a few inches) up to 4 feet, and one that's 14 feet long - those are the real sizes the fish would be in the Columbia! Here's a glimpse of four of the 144 fish.

Spawning Salmon:

They're gorgeous on the table - I can't wait to see them all hung up with the historical photographs in the gallery.

September?

2009-09-01T16:31:00.000-07:00

In my mind, September has always been the end of the summer. I think it has to do with spending so many years in school, and now working for a university. But the grass in the arboretum is still green and various individuals are out there enjoying it. Like this guy:

He's an African tortoise from the Biology department and lives in the Science Building, next door to our building. He was out today, getting some air and nomming some apples.

But I spend most of my time inside. Yesterday we were playing with the gallery furniture, testing out various arrangements in preparation for our opening exhibit. The mobile walls are really versatile! It was amazing to see the different ways in which our (more or less) rectangular gallery can be set up with the walls. Here's one view:

It's really astounding to think of how far we've come since we started this blog nearly two years ago (wow! has it been that long already?). I'm really looking forward to seeing the exhibit up in the space. I think it's going to be really great.

Object History

2009-08-17T12:33:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, we don't have extensive records on many of our objects. Sometimes we don't know if an object was donated to us in a broken state, or if it broke in our care (over the nearly 40 years a museum in some form has existed). So it was really exciting for me to find a contact print documenting the repair of a broken object.

I presume this occurred in the 1970s, when there was a great deal of activity in the collections. You can see that the ceramic figure was in (at least) two pieces, broken right down the middle.

Presumably, an adhesive was applied to the broken edges, and then it was held together. By what look like rubber bands. And then it is all one piece again!

And the repair has held through all the years. You can still see the crack running down the center of the figure.

I've got a large box full of negatives to go through. I wonder what other object stories we'll uncover as we work through those.

New Dean Hall Neighbors

2009-08-12T14:58:00.000-07:00

I learned this week that Dean Hall has some residents without offices. Whooo whooo can it be?

Do you see them? It's a couple of Great Horned Owls (I think). They've decided that those, um, architectural features over the windows are just about the best place to be. What's really neat is that, from the third floor stairwell landing, you're pretty much at eye level with them.

It's kind of appropriate that these great birds would choose to spend their days on the building that houses the Museum of Culture and Environment - this intersection of human modification of the landscape with the needs of wildlife is right up our alley.

Tyvek Shelf Cover project

2009-08-06T10:53:00.000-07:00

Our compactor storage is awesome. In addition to the compactor storage, we have a couple shelves of storage for oversize materials.

The shelves do their job well, but the objects on them are exposed to light and dust... especially light. A number of the shields have quite fragile pigments. So I wanted to devise some way to construct covers for the shelves. I considered many options, but eventually decided to use the Tyvek, which is a great material for museum use because it's light, waterproof, and pretty archival. Plus, I happened to have a roll of it 60" wide.

Except the shelves are 76.5" wide. Which meant that I had to bring in the big guns. Or, rather, the Mini Ultra Sewing Machine.

Now, I hadn't used a sewing machine in about four years, but I was pleased to find that I was still able to fill a bobbin and thread the machine. And, after some experimentation on scraps, I was also please to find that the Tyvek sews pretty nicely and doesn't rip easily.

The covers for the front of the shelf are quite large. In addition to being over 6 feet long, the shelves are 8 feet tall. In order to make such a large amount of material sewable, I did what any resourceful person would. I used paper clips to keep everything lined up.

The paper clips worked remarkably well. And so did the little sewing machine.

By the end of all that I had several large pieces of Tyvek and then had to work out how to attach the Tyvek to the shelves. I've seen velcro used with great success, but decided against the velcro because it would make adjusting the shelves difficult in the future and would probably leave a sticky residue on the metal if it was ever removed. Ultimately I decided to use simple magnets. The magnets hold up the Tyvek effectively, but are also easy to adjust, rearrange, and remove. It's almost too simple!

The end product of the the project is shelves which are protected from light and dust. I'm pleased with the result.

Moving the Field Museum

2009-07-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

I just got back from some vacation time and spent most of yesterday catching up on a ton of emails and museum-y news. As I was skimming my museum blogs, I found this link to a collection of photos from The Field Museum. (I think it was on a blog, may have been in an email... I had a lot to catch up on.)

A set up for moving exhibit cases.

The image collection is made up of 78 scans of glass plate negatives from 1920. They document the move of the Field Museum to its current location by train, auto, and horse drawn cart. It's fascinating to me to see all of the cases, with objects still inside them!, being loaded onto trains. Certainly appears to be a different method than we used earlier this year.

It's also worth peeking at the rest of the Field Museum Library's flickr stream. There are some pretty cool photos of two toed sloths, and a prehensile tailed porcupine on their front page right now. Very cool stuff. There are actually a ton of museums on Flickr, and a lot of fabulous image collections from history institutions in The Commons to explore. Check it out!

Walls and cases!

2009-07-01T14:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was very exciting around here. Our mobile walls and exhibit cases were delivered!

The good folks at Museum Resources designed walls and cases to meet our needs. They drove over from Seattle yesterday in a big yellow truck filled with all kinds of exciting things.

In just a few hours, the truck was empty and the gallery was filled with, well, take a look.

That's four mobile walls (you can only see one and a half in this photo), four display pedestals, and four table cases. The case toppers are in a different corner of the gallery. The walls had to be brought in in pieces and finished in the gallery. They went from planks of wood to walls before our very eyes. It'll be a couple of weeks until we put everything together, because this is just the first delivery! The second delivery will be all the small things to make these lovely big things useful.

It's great, because now the empty gallery space is really beginning to fill up. And those walls will be great for hanging the photography exhibit we're hosting in the fall. Check out our flickr account for more photos of the delivery.

Coming together

2009-06-24T09:35:00.000-07:00

As the (fiscal) year comes to a close, we're seeing a flurry of activity around the museum. The big news today? We have a sign and a docent station.

The sign went up yesterday afternoon. The sign guys have been putting up all kinds of signs around the building, but this is one of the bigger ones. They laid it all out on the gallery first to make a template.

It really helps to identify the museum. No more confusion about that big gallery in Dean Hall!

And just this morning we walked into the gallery and discovered that our docent/greeter station had been delivered. Modeled on a version in a catalog and constructed by the fine folks at CWU facilities, it looks great, and is versatile.

That's Angie behind the desk. Angie's here for the summer, and hopefully beyond, working on programming for this fall and the next school year or two. She and I had great fun playing with the new docent station. It's in two parts, so there are some options. Angie and I like this set up better; it certainly gives the person behind the desk more room to move around.

Everything is coming together now. We'll really be ready for our first exhibit this fall.

Organizing History

2009-06-23T13:17:00.000-07:00

This museum has been around, in one form or another, for 40 years. And we have the files to prove it. Unfortunately, those files have been in various offices and organized in various ways for 40 years, too. So, pretty much, it's a big mess.

I've undertaken to (re)organize the files, using the office floor and a spread sheet style organizational system. It goes by decade across the top and topic along the side. The files out represent just a fraction of the total files.

I have recycled So Much Paper so far. Lots of old, irrelevant articles. Lots of multiple copies of memos or forms long out of use. Lots of paper taking up space which doesn't need to be here. So out it goes, keeping only what's relevant. Once this all gets organized by decade and topic, I have a stack of brand spankin' new file folders to put it in and put it away in an organized manner. ... and the stacks of files on the office floor will be gone!

Finals week!

2009-06-09T11:14:00.000-07:00

It's finals week here at CWU and a lot of things are getting wrapped up around the museum.

The gallery lights have been replaced!

The security is being installed!

The collections are all unpacked!

The docent station (for the lobby) is almost finished!

There's a couch in the museum office (for visitors!)!

Walls and cases are being built!

We've signed the contract on our opening exhibit!

The corner display case has been built out so we can display things in it!

It's been a pretty productive week or two, I'd say. But with all of these awesome developments come some other final things. Four of the interns who've worked with me all year are graduating and moving on to bigger and better things. Thank you, Kim, Launi, Rachel, and Shena, for all of your excellent work with the collection this year. Best of luck in all of your future endeavors.

A Day in the Life

2009-06-01T16:09:00.001-07:00

I've always said that one of the things I love about my job is the variety of things I get to do. Today was no exception.

Note the enormous crate, we'll get to it later.

I got into work today and things started out pretty much in the usual way.
- I check my email and catch up on things from the weekend.
- I speak with the museum director about some grants that we've received and what sort of projects I have planned for the summer.
- My first intern comes in; I ask her to work on an inventory of the chipped stone (no small task).
- I begin to work on a short write up of collections work for the first annual report of the MCE.
- My first intern leaves, my afternoon interns arrive.
- I put them to work on rearranging the shelves and moving all of the shields and swords into the shelves(which take up a lot of space - this task condenses them significantly).
- A work study student arrives; she resumes a project researching the memoirs of our first donor for clues about the collections object.
- A biological anthropologist, for whom we've been holding a crate, comes down to say he's going to open the crate and take its contents up to his lab.
- The contents? A DNA sequencer. My nerdy delight is stifled somewhat when it doesn't look like an old school Star Trek computer with blinking lights and lots of knobs and buttons. It's actually a fairly nondescript tan metal cube.
- I help unload the sequencer and take the debris from the crate out to the dumpster.
- I continue working on and finish the draft of the collections work write up. I email this to the director.
- I work on intern evaluations.
- The afternoon interns finish up for the day and report on where they left off.
- Work study student wraps up for the day and heads home.
- I assemble the Shop Vac which arrived a couple of weeks ago and
- I clean up the small bits of wood and styrofoam left behind from the crate and packing materials.
- I decide that today passed so quickly that I should go blog about it.
- And I do all this while dressed nicely enough to go to a reception at the President's house half an hour from now.

And somewhere in there I found time to go get my espresso drink of choice (double 20 oz iced white chocolate americano with cream (and to think that only two years ago I had never had coffee! This is what moving to Seattle does to a midwesterner.)) and to eat lunch.

So! All in all, a pretty eventful day!

PS: Why is it that my post titles always make me think of songs?

Getting ready

2009-05-22T08:40:00.000-07:00

We'll be hosting our very first exhibit this September, and work is underway to make the gallery ready for it.

The gallery doors are being rehung and made more secure.

An unneeded door is being removed - this means more wall space inside the gallery!

The lights are being changed out for more object friendly lights (the ones hanging there are the old kind).

And the boxes are all unpacked and ready to be hauled away!

All of these projects are still underway and should be completed before the end of June. It's very exciting!

Fantasy and Reality

2009-05-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

There's this movie franchise that maybe you've heard of - Night at the Museum. And maybe you've also heard that there's a sequel - Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. I was at the movies this weekend (geeking out at Star Trek), when they played the trailer.

Now, when I watched the trailer, about 45 seconds in, the first thing I thought was "Not packing peanuts!" Apparently, in this film, some objects are shipped. This movie would have you believe that museums ship objects in enormous piles of packing peanuts. This is not the case. As in many areas, the way a museum ships objects is much more complex. There are often wooden crates involved, but almost never will there be an object just floating in a sea of peanuts.

Many professional shippers will take an approach called cavity packing (link to .pdf). From the NPS Conserv O Gram:

Cavity packing involves placing an object in successive layers of material (e.g., polyethylene foam) into which an opening is cut. The packing material insulates the object and will absorb vibrations created during shipping. Cavity packing supports the object and cushions it from movement. It also creates a microenvironment for the objects.

So it's a little more complicated. This website has some photos of more typical crating methods. Also, packing peanuts are a pain to clean up and the biodegradable kind make great food for all kinds of creepy crawly pests that you don't want around the collection.

And, for the record, I don't encourage touching ancient sculpture either.

Unpacking nears completion

2009-05-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

We're just boxes away from being completely, totally, utterly unpacked from the move. How to best prove this claim? How about some photos of used up packing material?

Bags of used up packing foam

Unpacked and reflattened boxes.

The foam is being sorted and we're saving much of it for reuse in future (non-permanent) packing. The boxes are going back to the University which will reuse them or recycle them as needed. Which is good. Right now the cardboard has overrun at least two of our work tables!

Whatzit answer

2009-05-07T14:58:00.001-07:00

Oops. Time got away from me here. We've been pretty busy these past couple of weeks. Unpacking, more unpacking, grant writing, planning for the exhibit in the fall, making tweaks to the gallery, dealing with the occasional crisis... there's been quite a bit going on.

So, what was that photo anyway?

May was correct! The image is a super close up of the toe of one of our many moccasins. Here's the rest of it:

It's sitting cozy in its custom mount on its new shelf home.

Return of the Friday Whatzit

2009-04-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

The museum was lucky enough to receive a small grant recently. This grant enabled us to purchase some supplies for making object mounts, and a shiny new camera. You should notice a marked increase in the quality of the images. I'm finding it a lot of fun to run around and take these great detail shots of objects, so that's the sort of Whatzit we're playing today.

Here's a close up of a collections object, cropped so that it's even smaller and more difficult to identify. The game is guess what this object might be.

Have fun guessing!

Museum history

2009-04-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

The museum collections have been with the University for a long time - some were received as long ago as 1953. But the vast majority of the collection I care for was acquired during the early 1970s when the Anthropology Department founded the Museum of Man. Located in Barge Hall on campus, the Museum of Man had displays and supported the museum studies minor.

I recently located some old photos of what I believe were the store rooms in old Barge Hall. It's pretty neat (for me, at least) to see the objects I work with daily in this context. The rooms are pretty small and the objects very crammed, and I'm sure that archival materials at that time were not what they are today. But the collections were cared for in line with the standards of the day. So take a peek at these old photos and see if you recognize anything from the photos I've shared over the past year and a half.

Growing pains

2009-04-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned the compactor storage? I'm sure I did. The compactor unit is a rolling storage unit, like you see for files at some medical offices, or in the stacks of some libraries. It makes the most of the space in small areas... or large ones. Our particular unit has seven large units, although the two at the ends are half width. They're 27' long and 10' tall. Essentially, these are enormous shelves. And super for a museum to have.

But last week Friday we noticed something alarming; the top of a couple of our units were scraping an air duct in the ceiling. The duct would move from side to side and the compactor unit was somewhat hard to move. So we took the tops off of the affected areas (Thankfully all the shelves, including the tops, are adjustable.) We could plainly see the areas where the ducts and shelving were rubbing.

This week we came back to it and replaced the tops, slightly lower than they were before. This seems to have solved the problem. We're not sure when the problem began, but we're glad it was relatively painless to solve. Especially so, since we hadn't placed anything on the shelves below the affected areas. In the photo below, the two shelves on the left side have been lowered somewhat. You can see that there's really not a lot of space wasted in this room!

Surprises

2009-04-10T10:08:00.000-07:00

There are two Pacific Northwest bentwood boxes in the collection. The four sides of bentwood boxes are made of a single plank bent into the shape of a box. These boxes are often beautifully decorated with formline animals and motifs. Boxes were used for cooking in and storage. They were often very highly prized possessions within families. To see more Bentwood boxes, take a look at this page of bentwood boxes from the collections of our neighbors at the Burke Museum in Seattle.

But this post is titled "Surprises," not "all about bentwood boxes." When we moved the box pictured below, we removed the top of the box. The top is quite heavy, and we didn't want to have the top falling to the ground while we moved the box (I shudder at the thought of dropping collections objects). As we were lifting and moving the box, we noticed an odor... a very distinctive odor... fish! More specifically, smoked fish - salmon I think. It was a surprise to find such a vivid reminder of the past history of the box hiding just out of sight.

As soon as we could, we closed the box up again, hopefully preserving this amazing experience for future individuals. It is now sitting safely on its new shelf here in Dean Hall.

Little surprises like this are part of what I love about working with museum collections. It's very detail oriented work, so sometimes I discover that the soles of a pair of moccasins were recycled from an earlier use, and sometimes I discover that a pair of sandals was once infested by many many hungry bugs (which is less delightful). And sometimes I discover something which can't be seen, like the smell of salmon in a bentwood box. It's very cool.

Done!

2009-03-31T15:17:00.000-07:00

It is done.

The collections move, that is. We completed the move between March 21 and March 25th. It took maybe 3 days all told. I didn't take many photos; I was too busy lifting lots and lots of boxes. But here's how it went down:

First, we identified which boxes we were going to pack. Then we checked them off of the master box list and loaded them into the van.

Then I drove very carefully to the new location, backing up to the museum loading dock. Believe you me, I got pretty darn good at backing up the full sized van we used. We then unloaded the boxes onto tables in the workroom. We would do a couple of loads of boxes before the tables were full and ready for the next step.

From the tables, the boxes were transferred to shelves in the compactor unit, based on what they contained. Both the master box list and the packing list on the outside of each box indicated where the box should go. As we placed each box on a shelf, we marked the shelf on the master box list. And pretty soon, we had moved a lot of boxes.

There were a few objects which were too large to pack in boxes. These objects were moved individually and placed on shelves - no need to unpack what hasn't been packed!

And, finally, after all the boxes that could go in the compactors were put in the compactors, we moved the oversized boxes into the storage room, where they are still hanging out today.

So far, nothing has been unpacked. There are four reasons for this: 1) after the move was completed, I hied it out of here for an extended weekend and some rest, 2) I've had to unpack all the supplies, files, and miscellany from the old office and workspace into the new office and workspace, 3) we're going to need to cut many many shelf liners for some of the objects to rest on (the liners provide a surface with more friction than the metal shelves), and, most importantly, 4) the objects in the boxes are now in a much different environment than they have been for the past decade or more and need time to adjust to their surrounding. The cardboard box provides a bit of a buffer to the environmental change, allowing a slower adjustment rather than shock treatment. Think of the difference between easing yourself into a cool swimming pool and diving in.

But we'll be unpacking soon enough. As soon as the chaos in the office is cleared up...

Beyond Collections

2009-03-20T10:28:00.000-07:00

This museum is more than the collections it holds, although they are a very important part. Recently, the interim director of the museum, Dr. Bill Wood, spoke with the radio station on campus. Click to listen to his interview.

He talks about our mission, the history of the museum, and our current series of workshops. Check it out!

It's the Final Countdown!

2009-03-20T08:39:00.000-07:00

Well, less space travel, more short distance travel in a minivan.

But yes! It is the final countdown to moving here in the collections department. Everything that can be packed is packed, with the exception of my desk, which I plan to deal with at the exact last minute. But the rest of the office is packed:

The storage rooms are all set to go. The interns finished packing on the very last day of their internships. Perfect timing!
Native American room:

World room:

This week I've been getting the new space ready for the move, unpacking the last of the lithics that we moved last month, and doing the paperwork to make sure everything is cleanly and clearly documented for the move. Today I plan to do some more data entry/paperwork and vacuum the tracks of the compactor storage (a surprising amount of debris accumulates in those!). And I plan to make triply sure that we are ready to move come Moving Day. Truly, we're in the final countdown.

Packing the baskets

2009-03-09T13:05:00.000-07:00

Now that we're mostly done packing the World room, we've moved on to the Native American collection. This means that we are packing many, many baskets. I thought I would give you a run down on the packing process.

The first thing to do is assemble a box, choosing the large or small size of box depending on what you're packing. Then find the next box number (we're up to box 225) and write it on the box in three place and on the packing list. Then, to be brief, put some stuff in the box. Make sure the stuff isn't going to shift when moved, and isn't being crushed. This usually results in a box looking like this:

or this:

Those objects are being surrounded by packing foam with a buffer layer of either tyvek or archival tissue paper. This method of packing ensures that objects are safe against the box tilting and minor vibration. What it does not ensure against is the box falling or being placed upside down. We will be relying on constant vigilance to ensure that nothing ends up upside down.

Each object in the box is listed on the packing list. The packing list is then entered into a master spreadsheet and each object's temporary location is updated in the PastPerfect database (ie "Object packed in Box 215 for the move to Dean Hall"). Once this step is complete and no errors have been found, the boxes are closed, the packing list is slipped into an adhesive envelope and stuck to the box where it will stay until the box is unpacked sometime this spring. So the final box looks like Box 191 in this photo.

And after that... the boxes are stacked in corners and shelving columns until moving day! And moving day is coming up fast. Two weeks from today!

Sure signs of spring

2009-03-05T09:43:00.001-08:00

Spring is springing. There are signs of it all around. The birds are singing, the snow is melting on the hills, and flowers are poking their heads out of the ground (or the landscaping crew has started their work, anyway).

The packing is going well! We're just over 2 weeks out from the move, so this is the final push. Yesterday morning, intern Kim and I tackled packing the large New Guinea shields. We secured three shields at a time to cardboard and placed them in mattress boxes. Here's Kim lining the bottom of the boxes with foam, and a rare sighting of the collections manager in the wild (that's me with my back turned):

We have the world collections room almost entirely packed at this point, except for some very large pieces and some masks which are being researched by the curation and collections management course. We've taken out the shelves and are storing the boxes in the resulting spaces.

A lot more work needs to be done in the Native American collections room. The objects there are generally less complex, and the interns and I have a lot more practice, so I'm confident that we can get this done in the next two weeks. We've a running start, having packed the lithics, and now have the beading and much of the southwestern pottery packed.

I've been working toward this move for so long, it's amazing to think it's almost here! We've even started unpacking some of the lithics into the new Dean Hall space, which is very very exciting. We unpacked 23 boxes yesterday. That was especially good, since we need those boxes back here to pack more!

And, by the by, this is the 100th post! Confetti! Streamers! Balloons! Cake! Thanks for reading everyone!

Check out this other blog

2009-02-17T12:41:00.001-08:00

Have I mentioned I have a background in archaeology? I do. Between that and the fact that I just finished reading an Amelia Peabody mystery (it was The Mummy Case if you're interested), I am finding the 2009 Dig Diary from the Brooklyn Museum especially fascinating. These entries chronicle an ongoing Egyptian dig. I found the most recent entry especially interesting as it discusses the conservation of some small finds - and uses a chemical we sometimes use in collections management, B-72. Go on, take a look!

Packing Update 2/13/2009

2009-02-13T08:15:00.001-08:00

Wow! We're already halfway through the month of February. That puts us about 5 weeks out from the collections move. That's pretty wild. Thankfully, the intrepid interns are making excellent progress in packing. Just look at all that empty shelf space:

And the boxes are really beginning to pile up.

I would say that this room is about 2/5 to 1/2 packed. The other room has only had its lithics packed. But, as usual, I think we're making pretty good progress and will be on schedule for the move. Fingers crossed!

Lithics Move Complete!

2009-02-10T09:46:00.000-08:00

At 10 am Saturday I met three brave interns in my office. We were about to embark on an epic journey: moving the lithics collection. For our purpose, we include in lithics the chipped stone (arrowheads, scrapers, and flakes), ground stone (manos, metates, pestles) and natural history pieces (selected fossils and geological specimens). All totaled, we had about 7000 pieces of rock to move.

And we did it in two and a half hours.

The move went very smoothly and now the compactor storage has something in it.

Most of the 7000 pieces were in the form of very small and relatively light chipped stone. Despite the small size of each piece, all 7000 take up a goodly amount of space.

The most difficult pieces to move were the very large metates. In particular the piece in the bottom left of the photo below - it took three of us to lift it 5 inches onto the flat dolly. I am not sure that it will be moving again anytime soon. Most of the rest of the material we moved will be unpacked into drawers in the compactor across the aisle from them.

And yesterday the freezer for the isolation room was delivered! It's very large and has hanging baskets just inside the top. It's also lockable to prevent small children from crawling in... or maybe for security purposes.

We're making progress!

Packing Update 1/30/2009

2009-01-30T09:33:00.000-08:00

We're shifting into full gear here at the Collections Department as we finish up various projects and move into packing full time. My dedicated interns have been hard at work. They're finishing up the photography of the collection (so we have a visual record of our objects):

You can see our high tech photo background above. Another intern is working on creating surfaces so we can move delicate objects like this Bear mask safely.

The cedar bark used for the mane is extremely fragile and small losses occur whenever it is picked up. The board minimizes the need to handle the mask directly and keeps any lost bark with the mask. Other masks have many fragile parts which need to be stabilized as much as possible (so the vibrations during movement don't cause damage):

And in the midst of this, we're still packing. And we have the gaps in the storage to prove it!

That's the former home of about 6000 pieces of chipped stone. Now all tidily shrink wrapped and ready to head over to Dean Hall. And our box stack keeps growing and growing. (This is one of three box stacks - don't let it deceive you.)

Packing update 1/23/2009

2009-01-23T09:19:00.000-08:00

What a week! The United States inaugurated a new President and we packed over 7000 objects.

Okay. They were chipped stone artifacts (projectile points, scrapers, flakes) and we're not exactly done packing yet.

In order to make the move easier on all, we'll be transporting the lithics in the drawers they are in now. Some of my intrepid interns took on the task of counting all the lithics, so that there is a current account of how many pieces are in each drawer. We'll wrap the drawers in shrink wrap to prevent any stray lithics from falling out in transport, and call it good.

We have, so far, 18 boxes (real cardboard boxes) packed with larger, heavier groundstone lithics. We're running out of places to squirrel them away, so we're beginning to stack them.

But my view has been less exciting:

I'm making sure that all the information we write on the packing sheets is entered into the database, and then the object locations are updated in the database, so that we have an accurate accounting of all of our objects, even as they are packed in boxes.

It's a pretty good running start, but we've got a lot of work to do in the weeks ahead of us.

Packing Rocks!

2009-01-12T08:59:00.000-08:00

I will never get past that pun. Anything to do with lithics will probably be accompanied by a terrible pun. I apologize.

We've packed seven boxes so far, 83 objects. It's a start on this collection of 9000+. Six of those boxes (51 objects) are lithics, primarily groundstone tools. Borrowing a method from the National Museum of the American Indian Move Manual (which the good folks at NMAI were willing to send me), I have been packing lithics with the wave method.

This method stops the lithics from rolling against each other during moving, and also immobilizes them without causing crushing. It's good for very stable objects like these pestles.

After a box is full, and with one layer only seeing as lithics can be quite heavy, it is taped shut and the packing list is attached. This way we can see at a glance how many objects are in the box and where it should go. The blank part of the form at the bottom will be filled out as the box is unpacked in the new space.

But in the meantime, the boxes are in temporary storage in the collections room. We'll be doing a test move of the lithics (as they are more stable in changing temperatures) in a month or so to work the bugs out of the move system prior to the full move over spring break. So until then, I'll be packing rocks!

What a Difference a Day Makes

2009-01-09T08:21:00.000-08:00

If you've been watching the news in the past few days, you've probably heard about the crazy flooding in Washington State. Thankfully, the museum collection and Dean Hall both avoided flooding. It was scary for a while, because an irrigation ditch runs through campus and it was running higher than I had ever seen it before.

They were even sandbagging around Dean Hall.

I took those photos as I left work on Tuesday afternoon, and by Wednesday morning, the water had gone down.

I guess this kind of (near) flooding is what happens when it snows for a month and then is suddenly 50 degrees F out. I know many museums on the west side of the Cascades are still in danger from overloaded rivers, and I wish them the best of luck with their situations.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-07T12:34:00.001-08:00

And we are off to a running start here at the Museum of Culture and Environment collection's department! For the next 9.5 weeks, I have the help of five fantastic interns. Between the six of us, we will pack the collection and have it moved before the end of March. Which is approaching a bit too fast for my taste...

At the moment, we're doing finishing up things before getting down to the business of packing boxes. This has included dealing with some more of our mystery objects. Objects about which I know nothing and have been unable to find documentation for. Probably my favorite undocumented mystery is this piece:
Front:

Back:

I have no clue what this is or where it came from. It's a fairly heavy piece of carved stone with a very interesting image on it. It doesn't match the description of any of the pieces we haven't found yet - there are no missing "carved stone faces." And there's always the possibility that this was a student project mixed in with the collection we have that came from a teacher's museum. But what is it really? The world may never know. Or perhaps someone out there does...

Winter Wonderland

2008-12-29T15:55:00.000-08:00

I took this photo on December 19th:

I could barely step outside without breaking into Winter Wonderland. There was a heavy frost on all the trees and the snow literally sparkled. It's not quite as magical now, but there has been snow over the holiday break. In fact, I just got back from a few days break for the holiday. All the students are still away, but I found that a mysterious visitor had left gifts for me while I was gone.

200+ cardboard boxes and 4 rolls of packing foam! I hope I ordered enough.... We have about 3000 objects to pack if you don't count the chipped stone (which should be okay moving in the drawers it currently lives in). Fingers crossed and away we go!

End of the Quarter

2008-12-11T15:22:00.000-08:00

Life around here is marked by the academic calendar. Last Friday was the last day of instruction, which makes this week Finals week. Last Friday also marked the last Annual Holiday Party the Anthropology Department will host here in Farrell Hall. Over the next few weeks, the Department will be moving over to the new Dean Hall.

Penny, the department secretary, snapped a few photos of the celebration decorations before they were taken down this week. I thought I'd share our holiday cheer! (click to see larger versions)

It's here!

2008-12-04T14:50:00.000-08:00

Today was the Dean Hall re-dedication ceremony. Although we won't be moving the collection until late March, it is good to see the building springing to life. Most excitingly, for me, was my glimpse of the storage room. With compactor storage!

The installation isn't yet complete - they will be putting facings on the units so they can be moved by hand crank. My first impression is that these units are HUGE. It's like walking through a 24' long canyon, moving between the rows of shelves.

We'll really be able to give the collection room to breathe and room to grow.

Seeing the unseen

2008-12-03T13:51:00.000-08:00

If you've been reading this blog for a while, I think you've come to understand that I am very particular about how objects are stored and supported. You've seen the bulky white foam and the specialized cardboard supports. But what about when objects are in galleries? They aren't (usually) encased in cardboard and foam. But, I assure you, we collections managers and conservators are still very particular about how objects are supported, even when on view.

The National Museums Liverpool blog has a nice post about exhibit supports and an even nicer flickr photo set of the process. Even though I work behind the scenes, I still love to see behind the scenes at other places. Enjoy!

Tips and Techniques Thursday: Support for Objects with Round Bottoms

2008-11-20T08:22:00.000-08:00

So much for succinct blog post titles, eh? In the spirit of weekly features which may or may not be posted every week, I present to you Tips and Techniques Thursday. As museum activity accelerates (we move at the end of March), we're working to stabilize objects prior to packing.

This week I worked on housing two buckets with rounded bottoms. The rounded bottoms mean that they can wobble as they sit on the shelf, potentially impacting other objects, but also putting pressure on a limited number of areas on the bottom. Meaning that some parts of the bottom could become more worn than others. So what to do about it?

You will need:
-A foam knife
-A safe cutting surface
-A hot glue gun and glue sticks
-Foam tri rod

Step one: Using an appropriate length of tri-rod foam, cut several triangle insets a couple of inches apart. Form into a ring to see if more cut insets are necessary.

Step two: Using the hot glue gun, form the rod into a ring and glue the ends together. Hold the ends together for half a minute or so; the rod wants to return to a straight form, so holding it is important.

Step three: If there is glue extruding at the join, trim it off or cover it with a piece of tyvek. Set object on ring.

Now the pressure is evenly distributed along the bottom edge of the bucket, and it is less likely to wobble and impact other objects. I borrowed this method from the National Museum of the American Indian.

Answer: November 8, 2008 Whatzit

2008-11-10T10:22:00.000-08:00

So I asked you all on Friday what this thing was:

Four of you responded and all were close, or right! It is, indeed, 3.5" diskette holder. Remember them?

Don't see them as often these days, and most new computers don't even come with a drive for them. But the museum has some.

We're preparing for the first wave of moving, which involves the removal of all filing cabinets to be repainted. When I started here, I went through the office and filled the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet with what I called "Obsolete Technology." This included a bunch of 3.5" floppies, a Jaz drive, and several Jaz disks. As I cleaned out my filing cabinet last week, I decided it was time to see if I could recover any information from those disks (none labeled later than 2002, which in tech years is an eternity).

First I had to hunt for a 3.5" disk drive. Once found, I discovered that half of the disks had been corrupted. Then I hooked up the Jaz drive to a desktop computer and was completely unable to get Windows XP to recognize the Jaz drive. Suggestions regarding how I could get the computer to recognize a Jaz drive are welcome.

So, at the end of several hours, I had about 20 photos of students working in 2001 that I had not had before. I also had a valuable lesson in information management. So much of what we do these days is done electronically, but digital recording mediums can become incompatible or obsolete in a relatively short span of time. Today, I am not burning information to cds, which are fragile and scratchable; instead, our data gets backed up to the server and we use an external drive which is stored off campus as a secondary back up. Is it infallible? No. But it does the job for today. Still, I trust our paper records to last longer than our electronic ones.

Whatzit: November 7, 2008

2008-11-07T08:12:00.000-08:00

It's Friday! Whatzit time! You know the drill: I show you a picture, you guess what the object is/is for. This time, I confess, I am cheating a little. This is not an object from our permanent collection; this is an object I came across while cleaning my office. I'll post about something related next week.

On to the photos!

It's made of teak. The top rolls back. And there are little pads on the bottom.

So.... What is it?

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T09:10:00.000-07:00

A mask from the collection - from Mexico. Possibly a Moros y Cristianos mask, and probably not a Guy Fawkes mask like I thought it might be initially. Although V will probably continue to be a popular costume this year.

Have a happy and safe Halloween weekend, however you celebrate.

Box building time

2008-10-30T08:14:00.000-07:00

It's busy busy busy here at the nascent Museum of Culture and Environment. Lots going on and lots in the pipeline. But today I am going to build some boxes and house some objects. First on the list: Russian religious icons.

Image on a wooden backing, with a copper overlay. The back is covered with an orange velvet. The velvet and the relatively small size of this icon suggest to me that this might be the sort of icon that one carried along during one's travels. There are five Russian religious icons in the collection; each one has its own specific needs for storage. So off I go!

Fun for Friday

2008-10-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

I think the usual image of museums in the public eye is as stiff and rigid and dusty. And in many ways, it's true. Museums hold to a code of conduct and very particular professional standards about object care. But we have a sense of humor, just like everyone else. Sometimes, we even watch the fake news on Comedy Central. And sometimes, we accept donations from Stephen Colbert.

Mystery Box Revealed

2008-10-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Remember that box from the other day? Were you curious about what was in it?

Four words: Ethiopian Goat Skin Sandals.

Ethiopian goat skin sandals which were once the home of an astounding number of pests, judging by the number of tiny molted bug skins I removed from the nooks and crannies of the sandals with tweezers. To be honest, it was pretty gross. I took a photo of the pile of moltings I removed from just one sandal. And possibly not all of them.

Icky, huh? I was glad to find that, despite all of the moltings, I didn't find anything that looked live.

In other news, the US election is coming up pretty soon. Voter registration in Washington State ends in a few days. If you haven't registered yet, go do it! And then vote! This has been a non-partisan message from your friendly civil servant.

Freezers: Not just for freezing food anymore

2008-10-15T16:04:00.000-07:00

The museum has a freezer. In fact, we're going to get a bigger and better freezer in our new facility, but this little freezer is doing okay for the time being.

Um, okay, so we have a freezer. That's kind of boring. But why does a museum have a freezer? For hoarding microwave dinners and popsicles? No! For Integrated Pest Management!

Some bugs eat the kinds of things we keep in museums: fur, leather, paper, glue, horn, pretty much anything. But spraying collections with chemicals can be bad for the objects, not to mention the staff, so most museums use an IPM approach. IPM tries to be environmentally friendly and use methods other than pesticides to control potential infestations. And one of those methods is freezing (.pdf).

Freezing an object once will kill many pests. Freezing an object twice will kill most larvae/eggs. And that's what I did recently - sent this mystery box through a freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw cycle.

The box is wrapped in two layers of plastic sheeting and masking tape. The barriers should prevent condensation from occurring on the object (which is Not Good) - condensation should instead occur on the outside of the barrier. And not all objects should be frozen either. Anything painted, metal, glass, and teeth are among the objects which should not be treated in this manner.

But what's in the box? Well, I'll get to that on Friday - I think this post is getting long enough.

PS: I've spruced up the sidebar with some new widgets. What do you think? If you know of some great widget (or better ones than I've found), let me know!

Website!

2008-10-07T08:07:00.000-07:00

Fall is here!

The Museum finally has a website! I've been mentioning a website since last fall, and it is here. It may not be the the shiniest, most modern website, but it gets the job done! Check it out!

Green is the new black!

2008-09-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

Dean Hall is on track to be LEED certified. So when NPR's All Things Considered profiled the California Academy of the Sciences as the world's greenest museum, it caught my attention. Check it out!

New Renovation Photos!

2008-09-25T15:59:00.000-07:00

Last week Friday, I had chance to tour Dean Hall a second time with the Anthropology Department. The last time I toured was in May, and a lot of progress has been made since then. It’s very very exciting to see the spaces really coming together.

Apologies for the photos – taking photos into dark spaces with flash and, apparently, a dusty lens makes it appear that it was raining in the building. I assure you, it was not.

This is part of the museum work area. Such a nice long work area with storage. There will be more shelves along the walls and tables in the middle to work at, as well.

This is my favorite part. This space is the collections storage room. The runners in the floor will support our compactor storage units. At the left of the image is part of the large structural column that also lives in our storage space. It’ll be a challenge to work around, but no more so than the challenges our current spaces present.

The overhead lights in the work space. Don’t they look big and bright? The alcove in the background is created by the entry way into the collections space – our loading bay, essentially.

That’s all for the museum space, but the rest of the building is coming along well too. The upper floors are more complete. This is the third floor student area. Lots of light, and a great view onto campus.

And your standard issue hallway.

We also got to go out on the roof. They’ve built a small teaching area up there. These pipes also come out of the building up there – they look very futuristic and just cool.

Oh yeah, and the view’s not bad either. I can’t believe the trees are starting to turn. Fall is here!

There are more photos in Flickr!

Whatzit Answer: 9/19/2008

2008-09-23T14:47:00.000-07:00

Last Friday's Whatzit garnered two guesses: A silly guess (my apologies, Jeff, if this answer was sincere) that the object in question is a decorative figleaf, and a more serious guess (thank you, May) that the object is a pincushion.

I would agree with May, that the practical use of this object was as a pincushion, although I might also imagine that it was simply hung on the wall. In our database, however, we call it neither a pincushion or a wall hanging; it's a whimsey.

Yes, whimsey, as in whimsical, fanciful, fun, silly. Produced by tribes of the northeast, often Iroquois or Mohawk, whimseys were popular between 1890 and 1930, often sold at craft fairs or, notably, to tourists at Niagara Falls. Whimseys were produced in many shapes and styles. The whimsey in Friday's post is known as a trilobe heart, but the boot was also a very popular style. We have many examples of whimseys in our collection.

An essay on Iroquois beadwork is available here, and images of many more whimsies are available here.

Friday Whatzit! 9/19/2008

2008-09-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

I'm back! I have a lot to talk about, but not right now. Now is time for another edition of everyone's favorite guess-that-object game: Whatzit?!

Here's today's mystery object:

It has a lot of beads...

Is firm, but not hard...

And has an undecorated side...

So... Whatzit? Answers coming early next week.

And the beat goes on

2008-09-02T15:01:00.000-07:00

Well, I am back from vacation. It was delightful and I got to see lots of natural beauty, some interesting museums, amazing petroglyphs, and lots of great American kitsch. But September is here, and I guess that means a return to reality. And with reality, comes mystery.

I have the object pictured below and I have no idea what it is. It reminds me of something my grandmother had with her sewing supplies, but I don't have a clue about how to start searching the internet to find a name for it. Do you have any idea? It's made of a light wood, with a structure that reminds me of bamboo.

And look what else I found upon my return to work! A great big spider. I think it's a Hobo spider. I saw two in two days. One here at work, and one in my apartment. *shudder* I'm not a huge fan of big, venomous spiders.

I'm not actually concerned about seeing one here at work because these spiders usually live outside, I didn't find it in a collections area, and spiders rarely pose a threat to collections. Spiders, if they are living in collections areas, are more likely to be a monitor that will let you know there may be other pests in your collections. Still, I'll be happy enough not to run into one of these guys again this year.

Summer Vacation

2008-08-08T14:30:00.000-07:00

Adventures in Collection Management will be quiet for the next couple of weeks as I go embark upon some vacation adventures.

I've spent today getting things in order: Cleaning up the work room, picking up and vacuuming the collections rooms, returning my library books. I've spent some time during this past week reading up on Columbia River Basketry and am now much more informed on the subject than I used to be. Reading about how time consuming basket making is and how vital baskets were to life in eastern Washington gave me an entirely new appreciation of the many baskets in our collection. The book linked above, Mary Dodds Schlick's Columbia River Basketry: Gift of the Ancestors, Gift of the Earth is an engaging read, and accessible. I would recommend it to any looking for an introduction to the baskets of this region.

See you at the end of the month!

Quiet Summer

2008-08-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

August! Already!

Summer is a time for getting things done. We've put in a lot of time getting a website ready. The text is written, the photos are burned to cd, the cd has been handed off to our web guru. If all goes according to plan, the museum should have its first official public-facing web presence by the end of September. It's not going to be anything groundbreaking, not at first, but it is exciting for us to take these steps. I am absolutely, positively going to give you a heads up when the website is up.

See that basket? It's one of two baskets chosen to be a part of the website header. This basket represents the kind of baskets used on the east side of the Cascades and by Interior Salish speaking people. This kind of basket was often used for picking huckleberries or root gathering. We chose baskets to be part of the header because baskets are not only beautiful objects, but also speak to the mission of the museum. Baskets were usually constructed from natural local materials for the purpose of gathering and storing natural materials. For a museum focused on the complex interaction between people and the environment, baskets of this type can tell many stories.

This basket will also, likely, be the first object profiled on the website as a "Highlight of the Collection." But first I need to do more research on it, so I can better tell its story.

Fragile objects

2008-07-15T11:22:00.001-07:00

There are many fragile objects in this collection - feathers, beading, paper mache masks, broken glass bottles - but there are some objects that make me nervous just looking at them. This partially reconstructed bowl is one of them:

My best guess is that this bowl or pot was never a whole object in the collection. There was a donation of thousands of pottery sherds received in the 1970s, and I think the pieces making up this bowl came from that donation. This bowl is one of the objects which lacks any documentation. There is no number written on it, which is the primary way in which I can match an object to its records. Fortunately, this type of pottery is a very small percentage of our collection, so I can make some educated guesses about its history.

I believe that these pieces came to the museum in pieces and were reconstructed as a student project. In many areas, one can see the glue seeping through the cracks and yellowing.

Most of the repairs seem reasonably secure, and I was able to lift it, but it makes me very very nervous to breath within a couple of feet of it. So what is going to happen to this bowl/pot? For the time being, it will be recorded as an undocumented object - an object that we might be able to find information on later, but don't have it right now - and taken care of as best we can. Deciding how to house it so it can be moved to a new facility will certainly be a challenge!

Crystal Skulls and Glass Flooring

2008-07-09T15:12:00.000-07:00

It's a quiet week here - I'm spending a lot of time processing digital photos for the database. We're also making headway in designing an actual website for the museum. This isn't an official date, but we're hoping to get it online by late August.

In the meantime, I keep up with museum news and blogs while I eat lunch, and two items caught my eye today.

More of the "crystal skulls" are forgeries. There was a big hullabaloo right about the time that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released over one of the famous crystal skulls being fake. The revelation that it was a forgery prompted other institutions with crystal skulls to begin close investigation. And this article reveals that the skulls in the British Museum and the Smithsonian both have evidence of modern manufacture. Sorry, Indy.

The Brooklyn Museum is reflooring its Court. Way more interesting than it sounds. This blog post from the Brooklyn Museum shows how they are saving and re-creating a very cool glass floor in their popular Court. Lots of neat images of original floorplans and the undertaking to save the floor. Check it out!

Back to work!

2008-07-07T08:09:00.000-07:00

Here in the US, we're coming back to work after a long weekend. I've got a list of projects to tackle this week which include processing some objects which had not been cataloged or photographed, some database cleanup, and some filing. In the meantime, here are some photos of the new building, coming along nicely. I may have mentioned this, but the museum will not be occupying the entire building; instead, it will have a nice suite of spaces on the first floor. The Anthropology and Geography departments will make up much of the upper floors.

As always, click through for larger images.
The addition to the front of the building is coming along very nicely.

The bottom floor walls have been put up.

It's quite a dry region here; you can see what the grass would look like if it wasn't watered regularly (most of the campus is).

Whatzit Answer: 6/20/2008

2008-06-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

Whoops! I didn't mean Thursday when I told you that the answer to last week's Whatzit would be revealed early this week.

There were two excellent guesses as to what this strange contraption might be: A clothes drier or wringer, or a paper or cardboard crimper. Both are close in their own way: This contraption is a fluting iron.

A fluting iron was used to put crimps, pleats, or ruffles into petticoats in days of yore. So it has both to do with laundry and crimping - half points to both guessers. Most fluting irons were not so fancy as this hand crank model - they usually had a ridged base and a ridged curved handheld top part. This particular fluting iron is from right here in Ellensburg, WA and is part of the oldest and most diverse collection in the museum. It's exact history is not known, but one can easily imagine the pioneer families of the Kittitas Valley ordering a fluting iron from the city to bring a little bit of luxury to their lives.

You can see many kinds of historic irons in North Dakota State University's Emily P. Reynolds Historic Costume Collection.

Science Friday!

2008-06-20T12:09:00.000-07:00

I listen to NPR here at work quite a bit. Right now it's Talk of the Nation Science Friday, one of my favorite shows. There are two gentlemen from the Getty Conservation Institute discussing art conservation and the agents of deterioration. Should be quite interesting.

Podcasts are available, and this segment is running at the beginning of the second hour. Check it out if you want to learn more about preserving and conserving from some very experienced folks.

June 20, 2008 - Whatzit?

2008-06-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

Oh boy have I got a good whatzit for you today! At least I think so. Check it out (click to view larger version):

It's metal, you can turn the hand crank which causes the two rollers to turn, and it's a pretty sturdy little machine. There's a small tab in front that can move back and forth adjusting... something.

From the back:

There are a few more photos, including of the text on the object, in our Flickr stream. Take a look at them, then come back here and give me your best guess on this mystery machine. All will be revealed early next week.

Summer Daze

2008-06-19T13:18:00.000-07:00

I've been doing computer work for the past couple days and my eyes hurt from staring at the screen. But it's all for a good cause. Projects underway include making a list of objects we have records for but no recent inventory of, figuring out how many chipped stone pieces we have (answer: about 6500), cleaning up the database, and some good old data entry.

I'm off to give my eyes a rest and work on a couple of issues that cropped up during the chipped stone count. I leave for you a completely unrelated image of small carved whale toggles - photographed and cataloged in 2007.

I'll be back tomorrow with the first Whatzit of summer!

School's out!

2008-06-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

"Intellectual control" is a huge concept in museums. It's not to be confused with intellectual property which also happens to be very important. Intellectual control means that a museum can account for its objects, their history, their ownership, and so on and so forth. It's knowing where objects came from and where they are and if they should stay where they are. (By the way, if there are museum professionals out there with a better definition of intellectual control, please share.)

When I came to this museum, I was happy to find that a good level of intellectual control had been established over most of the collection - most objects have numbers which relate them to donors, and the database allows most objects to be easily located.

But nothing's perfect. There are several boxes of rocks, like the one above, mostly geologic specimens and fossil leaf impressions, which have escaped cataloging for the most part. Over the past week or so, I've been working in one of the store rooms beginning to sort out these specimens. I've set up a mobile command center at which I can sit and listen to my local NPR news station while I catalog, measure, and photograph these objects.

I'll be honest; these rocks are a challenge. Many of them have duplicate numbers. That is, they have the same catalog number as a different sort of object entirely. Some of them were labeled with a number on a sticker and the sticker has fallen off. It's my task to figure out how to identify these objects in our records. Before I make that decision, I am determining the extent of the duplicate issue. The two primary options that I see at this time are to 1) add a letter after the catalog number (duplicate 8-57 might become 8-57G (G for geology?)), or 2) assign new numbers which would come after the last catalog number for the accession. Both seem plausible. Option 2 seems reasonable given that most of the labels are not applied directly - they're on stickers which are falling off already.

No matter what I ultimately decide to do (and I am open to opinions and alternatives), I am going to document the heck out of it. Part of intellectual control is knowing the history of the object to the greatest extent possible. So if 8-57 is reassigned the number 8-514, for example, I would record that on both the paper catalog card which exists, and in our PastPerfect database. This way future collections managers will be able to avoid potential confusion.

On the flip side of the duplicate number issue is the missing objects issue. Going through these boxes have revealed many objects which were earlier unrecorded in the database and had been presumed missing. So for these objects, it's a happy ending straight away!

Maya objects?

2008-06-02T15:04:00.000-07:00

The museum has a handful of what may or may not be Mayan artifacts. Or maybe Aztec. The transfer documents say Aztec. Pictured below are a cylinder seal and a figural whistle (click on them to see larger versions). Problem is, I don't know much about these artifacts. And I would like to know more. Can anyone out there in internet-land recommend a good resource on Mayan and/or Aztec ceramics? Bonus points if it addresses the issue of reproductions and fakes, since this is a distinct possibility.

That orange pigment appears to be much more modern than the rest of the object.

Although I am not a subject expert, the markings on this cylinder do not look like the Maya hieroglyphs with which I am familiar, but the overall look of the piece is aged.

Even if it turns out that some or all of our Mayan/Aztec/unknown pieces are fakes and reproductions, they are very neat and may have some useful value as "antique fakes" (which is a term I just made up, meaning reproductions from several decades ago).

Got to have the right tools

2008-05-30T08:52:00.000-07:00

for the job you're doing. You may have noted that one thing I really like to talk about are the supplies needed to do this job properly. This post is another in that vein.

One class of tools we frequently use is cutting tools.

When making boxes, cutting foam, etc, we need to use a sharp edged object.

On the left is a box opener, like you'd find in any hardware store. This is used for cutting cardboard, cutting foam, and sometimes, yes, even opening boxes.

Second from the left is our newest cutting tool: A foam knife. The foam knife is a thing of beauty. We often use 2" thick blocks of ethafoam which can be tricky to cut with smaller, less stiff knives. The interns who work with me have found that this foam knife makes precision work with the foam much easier. Frankly, I am pretty excited by the usefulness of this knife.

In the middle is a plain old kitchen knife. I picked it up for $.49 at the local thrift store. It has served well for cutting foam, but with the presence of the foam knife, it may no longer have a purpose.

Second from the right is a trusty standby: the Exacto knife. Excellent for precision work, cutting thin material, or poking holes through cardboard.

And on the far right is a blade similar to the exacto, but with a useful hook tool at the opposite end.

Not pictured is the noble scissors. Scissors are used from time to time to.... you guessed it, cut things. Notably for cutting tyvek or acid free tissue off of a roll and into shape.

Also not pictured: The First Aid Kit. When one is working with sharp tools designed to cut things, it is important to have adequate first aid supplies on hand. So far we have had no serious injuries. Primarily I've gotten paper cuts from the cardboard which sting like the dickens but are note serious.

So those are the sharp things we use to make proper housing for the many museum objects we care for. In fact, we actually have a drawer with many more exacto type knives and a couple more box cutters. And replacement blades. In the photo above, the blades are sitting atop a self healing cutting board, another extremely useful tool when cutting cardboard and other materials, as it keeps the blades from dulling against hard surfaces and keeps hard surfaces from being marred by blade marks. All tools of the trade.

Environmental Monitoring

2008-05-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

Summer is coming! At least it is according to the Weather Underground.

It still looks a bit like spring outside.

Okay, but what does this wonderful turn in the weather have to do with collections management, since that's why we're all here? Well, let me tell you! So the point of collections management is to maintain and protect collections from deterioration. One thing which causes the deterioration of collections is environmental conditions. That is, things stored at the wrong temperature or at the wrong relative humidity can deteriorate faster - just imagine what would happen if you stored your books in the bathroom, with all that water in the air. They'd wrinkle and crease, and maybe start growing mold. So you can see why it's important to keep an eye on the environmental conditions.

Our storerooms have dial thermohygrometers which indicate both the temperature and the relative humidity.

When we move to the new building, I will be using a very popular digital device called a datalogger which will perform the same function, but at a high degree of accuracy and consistency (I'll admit, sometimes I miss a day here and there, not to mention weekends.)

And to keep track of changes, I take down the reading every weekday morning. In this way I can keep track of trends over time.

It's not rocket science, it's not even fancy, but from these readings, I can generate excel charts showing the change over time, like this one from last October for relative humidity:

You'll see on that chart a relatively sudden drop in relative humidity(RH) - in about 2 days it drops 15%. That means the air got a lot drier pretty quickly. When changes happen suddenly like that it can put a lot of stress on sensitive objects, causing cracks, pieces falling off, and invisible damage that will accumulate over time.

This subject is of special interest right now because this week I saw a jump of about 15% in RH in a couple of days. I also found a document in the files from the 1970s, when the building the collections are in now was being built. It indicated that the entire building was environmentally controlled and would have a building wide RH of 45-55% (a standard 'normal' setting). But my tracking has shown that this environmental control has faltered somewhat over the years - RH in one storeroom spent much of the winter under 20%.

So what does this all mean? It means that our storage rooms have less than optimal environmental conditions. What can I do about this? Not a whole lot, really. I can monitor it, be aware that this may cause condition problems for some of our objects, and make plans to improve things in the future.

And I can spend some time in the sun this summery weekend, enjoying the natural environmental conditions.

Contruction site tour

2008-05-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

Today I had the chance to go on a tour of Dean Hall, which is currently being renovated. It was way cool. I've never been on a construction site like that - I even got to wear a hardhat.

This is the west side, the "back side" of the building.

We then started on the third floor. To get there, we climbed an exterior stairwell. Let it be known that I have a certain nervousness about stairways which open stairs, and about heights, so I got a little anxious climbing this thing. But it is very safe and I did not fall.

When we got to the third floor, we saw footprints in the concrete. Not new ones, but ones from 60 years ago or so when the building was first constructed (or maybe it was built in the 1960s, not sure).

The second and third floor have very cool lounges being constructed in the front of the building - they are going to have an excellent view of the university and be bright and sunny. Right now, however, they are a maze of bars.

Another view from the third floor level, but at the top of an exterior stairwell that we are about to descend.

We descended, went through the 2nd floor which has lots of labs and classrooms, then finally got down to the first floor, which was of interest to me, being where the museum is. For all of that, I only got a couple of photos. This first one is the exhibition space. Or will be, eventually:

We got into where the collections space will be and I snapped a photo of what will be the archives room:

That doorway you see is from the previous life of Dean Hall. It will be a wall in the future. The tour was very cool. For the past several months I've been looking at the plans of the museum, trying to visualize what sort of tables and shelves should go in there and how it will look. So now I've seen the space, and let me tell you, it looks big. We are going to have so many shelves to put things on. It's going to be excellent. I am especially excited about having a unified space - right now museum spaces are spread out on the first floor of the current building, and we need to navigate public hallways to move between spaces. If I get back into the building before it's finished, I am sure I will take more photos and keep you updated.

Whatzit: May 2nd answer

2008-05-06T08:17:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I asked you what this very intimidating object might be:

I only got two responses! I thought for sure something this crazy looking would have you all intrigued. But those I got were... well, they were very creative!

"I'm gonna guess: hoof spikes for battle horses!"

"From the time of its invention in 1809 up until the civil war, the swingbarb was used by whaling ships for unspeakable purposes."

Interesting thoughts, but I'm afraid they are incorrect. As it happens, my research has led me to believe that our records are incorrect for this object as well. Our records say that this is a spur. And that does make some sense - it's pointy, has loops to be tied to something, and is adjustable. But that's not right. Get this: It's a device to wean a calf from its mother. Specifically it is a spiked calf weaner (link goes to a modern version). You can see an old version at this online auction site (lot #8).

This is a device which is worn by the calf as a nose ring, making it the most punk of all the barnyard animals. The outward facing spikes (which are not really sharp) poke the mother cow when the calf attempts to nurse, which makes her reject the calf's attempts. They also make it difficult for the calf to suckle. Thus the calf is forced to eat grains and so forth.

Whatzit: May 2, 2008

2008-05-02T09:21:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the return of Friday Whatzits, and boy do I have a good one for you.

In this game, I give you a photo - either of a whole object, or a small part of an object, and you get to guess what it is. Then, sometime early next week, I reveal the identity of the object! Today is a whole object, a mystery object for you to guess.

(Click on photos to see larger versions)

This unpleasant looking device is made of metal.

It has a hinge which allows the opening to be adjusted.

So.... what is it?

You were a contender

2008-04-30T15:36:00.000-07:00

but I'm afraid you weren't chosen, flake scraper..

(apologies for the lousy image quality. I'll blame my 6 year old digital camera.)

The flake tool above was not chosen. It was not chosen to go on display at the Wild Horse Wind Farm Visitor's Center. Many others were, however, and I spent a chunk of time last week processing these objects for a loan. I will be sure to let you all know when the exhibit featuring our lithics is available for view. Speaking of view, the one from the visitor's center is incredible, if you ever find yourself in central Washington on a clear day.

In the meantime though, I've been taking photos, entering information in the database, and making sure our loan forms are up to snuff. Loaning material is a very formal affair in the museum world - we don't just stick in a box and hand it over; we have forms and documentation and reports. It may sound like a lot of work, but it's all part of making sure that both parties to the loan (the lender and the borrower) know exactly what's expected of each and so we can ensure the best care possible of the objects we are responsible for. Documentation, documentation, documentation!

It seems I haven't been very good about posting lately. I think that calls for the return of Friday Whatzits, don't you? Something to keep me on my toes and attending to this blog. I'll have to find something nifty for this week. See you Friday!

Supplies!

2008-04-21T14:48:00.000-07:00

The museum recently got a shipment of supplies! Okay, maybe this isn't really that exciting to most people, but I am the kind of person who checks the mail as soon as it comes and still gets excited by a package in the mail. So imagine my delight when my most recent supply orders started arriving in great big boxes like this:

Inside, were all kinds of goodies. I got a whole bunch of 2" ethafoam planks, which are great for carving out custom cavities to hold an object very securely. I did this with many of the bone and ivory pieces we have from Alaska.

And a bunch of foam rod which is possibly the most whimsical looking of the museum supplies we have on hand. There's about 100' of it in this picture. It's great for making pot rings (.pdf) (although I've been hot gluing the foam instead of trying out NMAI's "hot dog" method) and has many other potential uses as well.

And last but not least is the sticky subject of adhesives (get it?! Sticky adhesives! I crack me up.). Adhesives in a museum setting are problematic though - a truly archival adhesive (one which will not break down over time) may never exist, but adhesives have their place and are very, very useful. Last time I ordered super long glue sticks, but this time around we're going to try their shorter counterparts. That roll in front is double stick tape which has a myriad of uses. The museum clamping devices (cough *clothes pins* cough) in the background are not from any of the most recent packages - they are from the local drug store; they're used to keep 2 pieces of glued material from pulling apart. Simple, but it works!

The packages included a few other things, but I'm excited to have the foam rod (which we didn't have earlier) and to get some more glue sticks (which we were very nearly out of) and some double stick tape (which we were out of). It's good to get supplies.

These boots were made for walking....

2008-04-09T11:16:00.001-07:00

but now they're in a museum so no one is allowed to use them for walking, running, dancing, or even hanging out on the couch watching tv. And they're not boots, really, they're moccasins.

Over the past couple weeks I spent some time rehousing the moccasin collection. We have 17.5 pairs of moccasins, ranging from so tiny that they must be for a doll to mens sizes, and 1 pair of child's mukluks. Some of them were pretty much flat after being in storage for years (you know how a light canvas sneaker flops over? It's kind of like that. Shoes don't always hold their shape.), while others had some paper stuffing which gave them some support.

None had storage which allowed easy lifting while minimizing physical contact. So, taking a page from the Minnestoa Historical Society (which has really excellent information on their website, by the way), I set out to make custom supports for the moccasins, both internal and external.

I started with the moccasins, like this one. It had no internal support, although the large amount of beading held the shape of the foot fairly effectively.

Then I looked at what I had on hand: Cotton stockinette fabric, polyester quilt batting, scissors, and a sewing kit. The scissors, by the way, are distressingly dull. Must remember to sharpen those sometime.

For my first try, I made a rectangular pillow:

Okay, so it was approximately rectangular. I'm a collections manager, not a seamstress. But look how nicely it supports the back of the moccasin:

But, it occurred to me, feet are not rectangular. So the rest of the moccasin support inserts were made to be roughly foot shaped. Again, I emphasize roughly.

And check out the sole of the shoe above. Looks like it was recycled from a parfleche, or some other similarly decorated object.

And finally, after sewing 33 supports, all the moccasins were supported. I endeavored to recreate the external support which the MHS had utilized, and, ultimately, I think it worked out pretty well. Ours are made of acid free card board with a tissue paper layer on which the moccasins sit (because the cardboard is buffered and the tissue paper is not).

The freshly housed moccasins were returned to their wooden drawers where they will patiently await the move to a new facility.

Ultimately, this kind of storage will reduce the need for handling the moccasins which will help preserve them for a longer time. Feels like a happy ending to me!

Bloggy Recommendations

2008-04-03T16:05:00.000-07:00

Do you like reading this blog? Wanna find some more museum-y type blogs to read? Here's are three that I'm really digging right now:

Curator's Corner. From the Wm. McKinley Presidential Library & Museum written by Curator Kim Kenney. Very chatty and a great look into the variety of projects Ms. Kenney is involved in.

The Bowers Museum Collection Blog. Profiles one object each week with really excellent information and great photos. Very interesting stuff.

Smithsonian's Office of Exhibits Central. A really remarkable look behind the scenes of how exhibits are built. Posting can be erratic, but worth adding to your feed reader when they do post.

There are loads and loads of us museum bloggers out there now. Do you read more than one museum blog? What makes a good one? Do museum blogs make you think differently about the institutions who blog?

Happy April Fool's Day!

2008-04-01T13:56:00.000-07:00

April Fool's Day is a good a reason to post as any. No shenanigans will ensue, I promise. (although, check out this post from the Science Museum of Minnesota's Science Buzz Blog.)

Back in the day I would post three times a week, but now we're headed toward almost 2 weeks without a new post. I've got one in the works about the latest rehousing project I've taken on. Beaded moccasins. I won't say much about it, but I will say that I have spent much of the last week poking my poor fingers with sewing needles and pins (accidently, of course).

This quarter is going to be very very busy, I think. There are 7 (seven!!) students working with me this quarter. I foresee a great deal being accomplished.

(Why is it that blogger seems to remove the spaces between my sentences? Is it Firefox? Because I promise I'm spacing twice between each sentence and am not trying to confuse your eyes.)

Progress Report

2008-03-21T14:34:00.000-07:00

This week is Spring Break for Central Washington University. That means that it is extremely quiet in the building, which normal bustles with undergraduates during daytime hours. The quiet has given me a chance to take stock of progress. But first, a progress shot of our future museum home:

The Dean Hall renovation is progressing! The bottom floor walls have been moved out - I can see framing for them around - and the front of the building is being added on to. Dean Hall will house more than the museum; it will also be home to the Dean of the College of the Sciences, the Geography Department, the Anthropology Department, and several large classrooms. But it's exciting to see progress being made.

Progress is being made inside the museum as well. I had three hard working interns helping me this quarter. They worked on a variety of tasks including cataloging, rehousing, photographing, and updating the PastPerfect records for nearly 250 of our collections objects. Receiving special attention was our collection of West African material, including many pieces of jewelry, our collection of spears, arrows, and bows, and our collection of Southwest Pottery. I cannot thank these interns enough for their hard work, and am grateful that two will be returning for the Spring Quarter.

In addition, Anthropology 362: Curation and Collections Management researched our small collection of Navajo weavings and rehoused them. Previously, these textiles had been half-rolled, half-folded, but now they are rolled and hung on our impromptu textile storage rack.

So we've made some really excellent progress this quarter, and I think we're going to make some really excellent progress next quarter. We've come a long way, but there's a great deal more work to be done.

Rock on!

2008-03-19T15:11:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay, I have this affinity for puns in the titles of post. This post is about agates. The collection here in the Anthro Department contains a collection of about 400 polished agates. I will be the first to admit that I know very little about agates, but these are very pretty objects. There are about 14 Riker cases of these agates, none of which have yet been entered into our PastPerfect database. (Side note, unrelated: I had hoped there would be a wikipedia article on Riker cases, but if there was, it was buried under articles relating to Riker, William T (from Star Trek: The Next Generation, if you missed its 7 year run and subsequent syndication), alas.)

The agates below are selections from the very first Riker case I examined.

An Ellensburg blue agate. Apparently, this kind of agate is found almost exclusively in the local area (Kittitas Valley).

A sagenite agate is a type which has particular kinds of inclusions. Personally, I really like this piece for no other reason than it's pretty. ;)

A carnelian (meaning it has reddish hues) thunderegg agate. Thundereggs form inside of rhyolitic lava flows. That's a drama filled birth, for sure.

I've only worked through the first Riker case of these agates, but a glance ahead shows more polished agates, some shaped into hearts and diamonds. It should be interesting to learn more.

Real and Fake

2008-03-05T09:28:00.000-08:00

One thing that many museums deal with is the issue of reproductions in the collection.

For example: Yesterday I was going over an accession list for one of our collections (the list that was made of everything when it came into the museum). One of the items on the list was a bust by Desiderio da Settignano. I was skeptical. I doubted that we had a marble bust from an Italian Renaissance sculptor in the collection. But it's possible. Our collection, while small, is very diverse.

I hadn't encountered the object before, so I went to check on it. As I lifted it out of the back corner of the shelf it was on, I knew that it wasn't an original (it was far too light to be marble, and the inside was hollow); it was a plaster reproduction of A Little Boy.

Interestingly, none of the written documentation had indicated that this object was a reproduction. It was also mis-identified as a bust of the infant Christ. But a few minutes using google identified the original as residing in the National Gallery, and not being of an infant Christ, but an anonymous boy.

Now it's properly identified, and we have an issue in front of us: what do we do with this reproduction? It's not the real object, so it doesn't have the same intrinsic value (and I'm not referring to monetary value - the same would be true of a reproduction of a military uniform, or of a cereal box, for that matter) that the original would have. So do we keep it? If we don't keep it, what do we do with it?

I have my thoughts on this matter, but I'm going to keep them to myself. What do you think? How should museums handle reproductions (fakes) in their collections?

What is this?

2008-02-29T09:24:00.001-08:00

As the cataloging project moves forward, we occasionally encounter objects we can't quite classify. For instance, this object:

Our records tell us that it is a "New Guinea double figure." I tried to track down similar objects on the internet but wasn't particularly successful. Some objects from the Sepik River region have similar design, but no large flat carvings in this manner.

This week's Whatzit is a reversal of the normal. I don't know what this object is (currently it's going by the name "carving") or what its purpose originally was, but I have this feeling that it should be something relatively easy to find out. Good old google has not been particularly forthcoming, so I was hoping some one out in internet-land might have an insight.

This is how we roll

2008-02-20T10:17:00.000-08:00

Last Friday's Whatzit garnered 2 guesses: serape or a "contemporary version of a Buddhist sand mandala." While both guesses are interesting, I'm afraid it's much simpler than that; it's a rug.

More specifically, it's a small woven rug from Iran and it is the first textile in our collection to be rolled.

Yep. Rolled. Rolling is standard practice for storing museum textiles. Folding rugs, blankets, etc. like you might do to store them in your linen closet is not good for long term preservation. The fibers along the fold become brittle and it becomes difficult for the textile to be laid flat. Small textiles can be stored flat, but when it comes to a blanket or a quilt, most museums simply don't have the space to do so.

The rug in question has been folded, probably for several years.

These are the rolls that our textiles are going to be rolled around.

Yes, they look like giant paper towel tubes. And, in essence, they are. Except they are acid-free and unbuffered, which makes them more expensive than giant paper towel tubes. The first step involved wrapping the tube in Tyvek. Even though the tubes are "museum quality" they'd been shipped unwrapped and moved around in that state, so I wanted to provide a definite layer between the textile and the tube.

Then I unfolded the rug and laid it on a long piece of acid-free, unbuffered tissue paper. I carefully, tediously, made sure all the fringe was laying straight:

Since the rolling will have the textile resting against itself for a long long time (unless we use it for an exhibit, or it is the subject of research), any bent fringe, any folds in the textile will be reinforced over time, putting extra stress on the fibers - the exact thing we are trying to avoid. In the same vein as having all the fringe straight, it's important not to let the roll drift, and to make sure the edges of the rolled textile are stacked exactly:

In the above photo you can see how ingrained the creases are already. The tube, prepped with tyvek, is placed in line with the textile. Then we're ready to roll!

Halfway rolled:

To get to the halfway rolled point, I had to start rolling a half dozen times, each time adjusting slightly to make sure the edges of the textile stacked exactly.

All the way rolled:

The textile is entirely rolled, with an outer covering of tyvek to protect it from dust, and a couple of cotton twill tape ties, along with a very important label to let folks know exactly what is inside this mysterious roll.

CWU's Collections Management and Curation course is working with our collection of Navajo textiles this quarter, part of which will require them to roll or otherwise properly store the textile they are working with. So, in the near future, an important portion of our textile collection will be stored this way.

In the words of Optimus Prime: Roll out!

Whatzit: February 15, 2008

2008-02-15T12:44:00.000-08:00

This week we have the section of... something... for you to take a look at and try to guess what the full sized object is.

(click to see a larger version)

This is an object about which I will have a lot to say come Tuesday or Wednesday when I post the answer. Until then, good luck guessing!

A tale of two housings

2008-02-08T09:41:00.000-08:00

The museum has been very lucky to have three dedicated interns this quarter. One of the interns, Rachel, has been working on our collection of arrows, bows, and similar things. She's taken some well intentioned custom housing and transformed it into modern, safe, and really lovely housing.

This is the original state of the arrows (click to see larger versions):

The arrow stand had short pieces of plastic tubing which held up the arrows. The tubing was originally clear, but is now yellowed. When we took the arrows out of the tubing, we found it was often difficult to do so while not scraping the tubing against the shafts and to do so while properly supporting the entire shaft. It seemed clear that continued use of the old arrow stand would not suffice.

Rachel first did some research and catalogued the arrows. Our records indicate that these arrows are from the Barama River region in Guyana. We think that they were used in fishing. They seem to resemble spears, but have feathers and a nock so look to be used with a bow. The tips are made of wood, not rusted metal, as it might appear at first glance. In short, these are really cool looking objects.

After much planning, discussion, and work, Rachel has created custom housing for the arrows which is much much better.

We had no boxes long enough, and even our plain cardboard was too short to use, so Rachel had to MacGyver a solution out of what we did have. The box is made of two different boxes, cut and glued together. The supports are ethafoam with cotton tape ties. The boxes are thrifty and effective!

And don't those arrows look excellent!

I'd call that a job well done.

Answer 8-156

2008-02-05T13:46:00.000-08:00

Last Friday's Whatzit was correctly identified by Allyson! It is a parfleche.

Parfleches were used to carry many things including foodstuffs and clothing. They are often decorated in bright colors and the designs are sometimes maps (according to one online source I read). I think of parfleches as the pre-runner to backpacks and suitcases. I'm not sure how apt that analogy is, but these objects certainly seem to be useful.

The parfleche is made of leather or hide which has long since stiffened and dried out, making it impossible to unfold it and use it as it was originally intended without causing significant and irreversible damage to it.

Whatzit: February 1, 2008

2008-02-01T15:06:00.000-08:00

You know the drill - photo of a small portion of a larger object. Guess what the larger object might be. (click to see a larger version)

Clue: This object is a container.

The full image and the answer will be revealed on Tuesday!

A Broken Bottle

2008-01-29T11:21:00.000-08:00

Yesterday and this morning I've been constructing storage for one of the most fragile objects in the collection. Not only is this object fragile, it's actually broken. It's a brown glass bottle, enclosed by basketry and was probably made by an individual in the Makah tribe. Problem is, at some point in the past, the glass bottle broke. The basketry is still completely in place, but when moved you can hear the glass shards clattering into each other within the basket. (click on any of the photos below to see larger versions)

My first step was to make a box that the bottle could be isolated in. The box has ties on the sides which means that the sides drop down, making it easier to get the bottle out for research.

But just setting the bottle inside the box isn't going to stop it from tipping over and breaking further, so I made two Tyvek pillows. These pillows are filled with polyester quilt batting and sewn shut. The pillows are then attached to opposite sides of the box with velcro.

Then I closed up the box, tied the sides, and, viola!, the bottle is immobilized but it is not subject to too much undue pressure. The pillows can also compensate for any shifting that may occur within the body of the object.

This housing should help to mitigate further damage to the object and help to support it as well. It's a beautiful object, so I'm pleased that this box is a success.

I looked around the internet, and if you'd like to see similar basketry bottles, check out the Ethnology Collection at the Burke Museum, which is available to look at online.

Answer

2008-01-22T09:29:00.000-08:00

Just a quick answer to last Friday's Whatzit, because a long weekend means a short week with as much to do as usual!

It's a face carved out of a coconut. The top of the head is removable and the inside is hollowed out, so it's also a container. "Aloha Hawaii" is carved on the back. I believe we have two more similar objects in the collection!

Whatzit

2008-01-18T09:42:00.000-08:00

Okay folks, you know the drill. Small portion of larger object shown. What's the larger object?

No clues, but I hope you guess. I think this is a fun one.