Organizing History

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!

Museum history

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.

Belated answer

So last week Friday, I asked how big this crazy pine cone was. One guess came in - at 9.5 inches.

9.5 inches would be an excellently large pinecone, but it pales in comparison to the true size of this pinecone. 19.3 inches or 43 centimeters. It has a diameter of about 5.5 inches.



It is, apparently, a cone of the sugar pine collected around 1920 in northwestern California. So not only is it really big, it's really old. I think that's pretty cool.

Adventures in Collections Management will be taking a break for Thanksgiving, but we'll return early next week. And word on the street is that we'll be starting up a real, honest to goodness website for this museum-in-development over the break. So I hope I can bring that to you by early December. Have a great holiday weekend, those of you in the US! And everyone else, just have a great weekend!

Contaminated Collections

Pesticide residues are a big problem in museum collections. Particularly pesticide residues which remain tenacious over a long period of time - like arsenic.

Back in the day, it was common practice for museums and collectors to "poison" their collections - dipping them in some kind of chemical bath - to keep away the bugs, the rodents, and all manner of creepy crawlies which might eat the organic material in, say, a basket, a mask, or leather objects. It was recommended by the Smithsonian. This was wildly effective - there are many many beautifully preserved objects. To this day student museologists hear tales of small historical societies with volunteers who keep their cache of old pesticides on hand to treat incoming collections. The downside to the practice of poisoning collections is that the poisons which kill the creepy crawlies also tend to have detrimental health effects for humans as well.

This means that, unless museums have absolutely perfect records of the object from the time it was made through to the present day, we need to assume that an object is contaminated. Like this basket.



As I went to make a condition report of this basket, I noticed a white residue. Not exactly crystalline, but grainy and visible to the eye. Arsenic sometimes has this property over time (although I am not a chemist, nor do I play one on TV). But I wasn't taking any chances. I was already wearing my nitrile gloves (although not the brand linked to - we buy powder free gloves), because I am aware that pesticides are a likely issue in the collection. I began wearing a mask when handling this basket as well.

So I have a basket that I think might be contaminated with arsenic. What does it mean? It means that most of the collection is probably contaminated, as it has been moved over the years. But the nature of the residue made me feel that it might be removed by brushing or jostling. I do not wish that, because then there would be free floating contaminants. So I created a custom enclosed box which will help to isolate this basket and any poisonous residues which might be on it. I place a warning on the exterior box so that others are aware of the possible issues with this object.

Now, it's entirely possible that this is not pesticide residue. Maybe the white grains are some sort of paint splatter or old mold growth that looks unfamiliar to me. But I prefer to follow the old adage, better safe than sorry, and be careful.

The National Museum of the American Indian has a very good page of links on this topic, if you would like to know more.

Monday Answers

On Friday I asked you all, Whatzit?

Larissa said she thought it might be a multi-purpose candle holder. And that's close enough for me!

Here's the story: Ellensburg is very near to the Cascades, and very near to a small town called Roslyn. Roslyn was a coal mining town and this object comes out of the coal mines there. My information says it was a miner's candle holder. The point could be driven into a crack in the rock, or it could be hung from a ledge with the hook.

Mining was a huge industry in Roslyn, especially in the early years just before 1900. Even today, as we see on the news all the time, mining is a dangerous industry. Can you imagine what it was like over a hundred years ago? Going down underground with just a couple of candles and these candle holders to light your way as you work in the dark and the dust? It's a scary job, but a job that fueled the railroads which helped to populate the West.

I found this description of miner's candles via Google Image Search. It's a small object, and fairly simple, but important historically.

History

How do you start a museum collection? Well, someone says "I would like to give you these things" and you say "Okay, I'll take them." And there it begins.

In the case of the museum collection at CWU, the collection began in 1953 with a large donation from a local doctor which runs the gamut from lithics, to natural history material, to coffee grinders. After that, the donations were pretty quiet until the 1970s when an effort was made to become a museum.

In the 1970s, many donations were made to the museum, and an exhibition space was created. A professional museologist (their term!) was brought on board to maintain collections, exhibits, and the museum studies program. Sadly, around 1980, budget cuts resulted in the loss of the museologist position and the museum more or less shut down. The collections remained. Over the next 20 years, efforts were made from time to time to revitalize the museum, but none came to full fruition. In the past decade or so, the collections were cared for by one of the professors and his wife, who served as volunteer curator.

I was brought on in August as part of a bigger plan for the museum. Renovations in one of the buildings on campus will provide us with a dedicated exhibition space and a collections space with more climate control then we currently have now. It is my task to ready the collections for a move to this new facility. This includes everything from writing up new policy and forms, to putting official paperwork in order, to making sure the collections are housed in ways which will keep them as stable as possible for as long as possible. And that's the short version of the story as I've discovered it. I understand that a longer version is in the works for the official museum site (which I will, of course, link to when we get it ready to roll).

It's really very exciting. While the collection has been cared for and documented over the years, I can find areas where we can improve on the care and documentation. By doing this, we'll make the collection useful to potential researchers (students, faculty, visiting scholars) and we'll have a really cool collection to use as a base for exhibitions in the new museum space. I hope you'll follow the journey.