Ah, autumn. The leaves are falling, the days get shorter, little kids stand you up at your own front door, demanding sweets to protect your house from harm, just like tradition dictates. And, oh, yes, flocks of registrars, collections managers, and documentation specialists travel all over the world to hold their secret – or not so secret – gatherings. ‘Tis the season!
I am just back from a trip to St. Pölten, Vienna, and Berlin and am preparing to head out to Zürich and Rome. I am looking forward to reconnect with familiar faces and get to know new ones at the European Registrars Conference. If you attend there, too, just say “hi”. I am happy to chat with you.
If you are interested in what is new, you can catch me talking about the book online for Museum Studies LLC on Tuesday November 19 at 9 pm Continental Europe, 8 pm U.K., 3 pm Eastern, 2 pm Central, 1 pm Mountain, Noon Pacific, 11 am Alaska, 10 am Hawaii, Wednesday 9 am New Zealand, Wednesday 7 am Australian Eastern. You can register by writing to Webinar@MuseumStudy.com
I hope you are enjoying spooky season and perhaps we see each other, soon!
It might sound trivial at first that a beetle isn’t a household article but if you look closer, it isn’t. When a coffee cup breaks during a move you just go ahead and buy a new one. It gets annoying if it belonged to a set that went out of production a while ago. It becomes an irreplaceable loss if said coffee cup was connected to a special memory, for example because it belonged to your great-grandmother or because your child made it themselves.
Museum collections are pretty similar to the last case but now it isn’t just about the memory of one person or a family but about the history of humankind. Which means that the loss is far more grave.
Now, when it comes to collections of natural history an additional aspect comes into play: here, the loss of one object equals an irreplaceable loss of information that is important for current and future research. This is of course also true for art and history collections but in these cases at least the loss can be tempered if the object was well documented and digitized. Our beetle, on the other hand, is a repository in itself. Only this one specimen was collected at precisely that time and precisely that place and preserves all information about its environment at that time. No form of documentation and digitization can anticipate all the questions future generations of researchers will have. The preservation of that information is only possible by preserving the beetle itself.
Beetles in a museum collection, photo by Markéta Klimešová via Pixabay
Not all beetles belong in a collection
Because the preservation of the objects is so important generations of researchers tried to keep them out of harm’s way. Now, natural history collections are especially attractive to pests and therefore every biocide the chemical research and industry discovered in the last centuries was used in them. DDT with insect collections, arsenic with taxidermies, mercury in herbaria, from nerve toxins to organophosphates you are handling everything that can harm your health or even kill you.
In case of a collections move this means you have to deal with two aspects absent from a conventional household or office move:
You have to prevent pests from getting to your objects during transit. This means that the items you are moving need to be packed the way no pests can get inside and that you have airlocks and quarantine stations on your transport routes so you can be sure nothing got infested.
When planning the work to be done in preparation for the move you have to keep in mind that you are handling toxic goods. In the past the use of biocides was rarely documented and the only way to be sure what you are dealing with is gauging your collection before you actually start working. This will tell you which precautions you have to take previous to packing and moving and what you have to account for in the new storage.
On top of that there is another danger: the objects themselves. Some of them are toxic or radioactive and therefore you have to treat, transport, and store them differently than your common coffee cup.
Packaged beetles – No package tourists
Transports get quickly done if things can be standardized. You know that from moving house: if you can use standard packing crates they will fit seamlessly into the truck. All you have to do is pack them in a save and reasonable way and avoid overloading.
In natural history collections there are many things that can be standardized: Our beetle will most likely be stored with a lot of its fellows in one drawer and this drawer can be neatly packed and moved with other, similar drawers. But a lot of other specimen don’t do their collections managers the same favor.
Many are stored in glass containers filled with alcohol or formaldehyde which means they are not only fragile but also sensitive to vibrations and their contents inflammable and noxious. You are also not allowed to transport them through a water protection area, which you have to account for when planning the shipment routes.
This is but one example of the many special, non-standard cases you have to deal with when planning the move of a natural history collection. Some specimens are so heavy you need to hire specialized riggers to move them. Others are so fragile you need to get special crates built for them. Many are both heavy and fragile. Then others are preserved by freezing them and if you want to move them you have to make sure the cold chain stays uninterrupted. A taxidermized giraffe or the skeleton of a whale can keep a whole team of experts occupied for days just to find the best way to move it.
Storing beetles – Not a case for your local furniture store
If you have read this far you already guessed it: if you want to store a natural history collection then this storage space needs to fulfill a lot of criteria. It has to deter pests, have a stable room climate, needs a good air circulation and has to be equipped with furniture that allows objects to sit in them for centuries without being damaged yet be easily accessible for research.
Different kinds of specimen collections can have very different requirements. High humidity is a problem for most of them because it enables mold and attracts pests but a room being too dry can cause problems as well. Fluctuations in temperature can rupture the skins on taxidermy specimens and cause fossils to break. An insufficient air ventilation might cause a high concentration of toxics in a room and/or introduce mold. Good collections storage provides the appropriate climate for each of its collections. They are built the way that even in case of an emergency that results in failure of all technology a good storage climate can be re-established by conventional means in such a short time that no permanent damage or even loss of objects happens.
Accessibility is part of a safe collections storage. You need to be able to remove one specimen in a way the other objects stored with it stay unharmed. Our beetle in its drawer is a real space saver, here. Other specimens need far more space. For example, it has to be possible to remove a specimen stored in a jar of liquid from its shelf without having to move other containers. This means you can’t fill your shelves to maximum packing density and you need more storage space but for a good collections storage this is inevitable.
For all these problems there are good solutions but they are not available in your local furniture or hardware store. There are experts and manufacturers who have specialized on these topics.
Whatever is planned for your final storage has consequences for your move: If your beetle is right now in a drawer that is contaminated by pesticides or simply doesn’t fit into your new storage furniture this beetle and its comrades have to move to a new clean and fitting drawer before the move. It is rather common that one big collections move means a lot of smaller moves beforehand.
Ask the beetle anytime
When art or history collections move they often put parts of their activities in collections, exhibitions, and research on hold. A natural history collection that is part of an international network of research institutions in most cases can’t afford this comparative luxury.
In effect, this means that the move has to be planned and executed very different from other moves. It isn’t possible to pack whole collections and store them in a compact and largely non-accessible way until the big move takes place. It must be possible to get access to every collection and every specimen at any given time.
In general, there are two ways of dealing with that: You can limit the time an object is actually crated and in transit, which means that preparation, packing, moving, unpacking, and storing is a matter of just a few days. Or you can crate the specimen in a way that access is possible at any time and without endangering the object itself and the objects packed with it even during the move. Both possibilities have advantages and disadvantages but they both mean that you need more space both in the location you are moving from and in the one you are moving to. It means as well that you need more time and more staff compared to other types of collection moves.
To sum up: Why moving beetles needs a sum of money
With your own experience of moving houses in mind the amount of time, money, and staff it takes to move a museum collection seems to be comparably high. An impression that quickly vanishes when you know the reasons.
Make no mistake, no museum collection is as such “easier” or “harder” to move. Every type has its own, unique challenges. But natural history collections are for sure among the most complex ones you will encounter. And they have a disadvantage: while everybody intuitively understands that you can’t just throw the Mona Lisa on the back of an old truck, a beetle is at first sight “just” a beetle. It isn’t at all obvious that this beetle is a repository that holds perhaps more important and undiscovered information than the well researched and documented artwork by Leonardo da Vinci.
This adds an additional challenge to a move that is already made complex by the variety and sheer masses of objects that have to be brought safely from A to B: the general public has to understand that a beetle is not a coffee cup.
The new edition of “Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections” is in the making but not done. In fact, this post finds me bowed over my revising notes and frantically typing in all I have missed last time.
Time to open up the conversation, show you what I have done so far and comparing notes with you, the readers of the first edition, students from my courses, or just people generally interested in the topic.
Time for you to grab the keys – or the mike!
Join the free online talk!
Museum Study will host a free Unmanaged Collections Talk on Tuesday December 19 at 9 pm Continental Europe, 8 pm U.K., 3 pm Eastern North America, 2 pm Central, 1 pm Mountain, Noon Pacific, 11 am Alaska, 10 am Hawaii, Wednesday December 20 9 am New Zealand, Wednesday 7 am Australian Eastern.
Fall is the season for conferences and this year I will be at Gallery System’s Collective Imagination in Washington D.C. from November 13 to 17. I am excited to meet a lot of registrars, collections managers, and other people involved in museum documentation there. Of course, I will speak about managing previously unmanaged collections, this time about how to tackle them if you are using TMS. If you attend as well, drop by and say “hi”. If you don’t attend but are in the area and like to meet for a coffee, drop me a line. I can’t promise it will work out, but I will be around on the weekends before and after the conference to get to know the city, so it might.
See you there!
Angela
The Capitol and the city of Washington, image by 12019 via pixabay.
EODEM 1.0, the Exhibition Object Data Exchange Model, was officially released on September 1st. But why should you, a registrar, be excited about those five letters? Isn’t it just another standard in a museum world that doesn’t lack standards – but is short of people, money, time, and, every so often, the institutional buy-in to enforce those standards?
Well, first of all, it isn’t a standard: it is an exchange model. That’s right, this isn’t something that will force you to restructure your data – although, seriously, there are good reasons to do so while you are at it, and EODEM itself is defined as a profile of the LIDO standard. EODEM is something that will enable you to exchange the data you already have about your objects with other colleagues. Something you most likely already do when you are lending, borrowing, and/or co-operating with other institutions for exhibitions.
So the tedious task of typing data from a spreadsheet or email you received from another institution could become a thing of the past with EODEM! If it is implemented, you can just import the EODEM file your colleague sent you and the information will appear in exactly the fields in your database where you need them to be. It doesn’t matter what collections management system your colleague uses. If one system can create an EODEM file from its data, you will be able to import that EODEM file in whatever system you are using!
EODEM logo
There is one big if, though: just because EODEM is out doesn’t mean it is already in your collections management system. The good news: EODEM was developed together with vendors, so, right from the start, this model was built in a way that should make it easy to implement it in most collections management systems. The bad news? Vendors of collections management systems are not big software companies, just as the museum field isn’t a big industry. So, there isn’t an armada of developers idly waiting for EODEM to be ready for them to bring it into their systems. Instead, EODEM is competing with a lot of other things to be implemented, developed, and/or fixed.
And guess what? That’s where you come in.
The more users of a particular collections management system ask their vendor about when EODEM will be available to them, the more likely it will be to get a top spot on the roadmap. So, what you, yes, you, the only registrar on staff, the loan arranger, the museum professional who wears far too many hats, can do to export and import your exhibition data with a click of a button in the future, is simply to ask your vendor when you will see that option in your own database.
Nagging someone until they finally do it just because it is easier than saying “no” or “we will see about that” to you every single time sounds familiar to you? Ha! Thought so! It is basically the job description of a registrar. Which means, you will get EODEM if you put your mind to it.
Aberdeen South Breakwater Head Lighthouse (built 1815), picture by Jamie McLennan via Pixabay
Just a short update: Work on the next edition of “Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections” has begun. I start with doing a complete read-through, marking passages that are outdated, clumsily worded (I often used “he or she” which will now become “they”, for example), or could use a bit more clarification. If you have found something along these lines, please, let me know, a second pair of eyes is always best.
I have found a few colleagues willing to contribute real world examples and success stories, but I could still use a few examples from indigenous collections (preferably taken care of by people who have ties to the nations involved, but not a must) and digital collections.
If you happen to know someone who happens to know someone who knows someone… please spread the word!
In other news, I will be visiting Aberdeen at the beginning of September, doing my own version of work and travel – I will train a client and do some sightseeing and hiking in between. I am excited because the city itself and Aberdeenshire were still missing on my map! If you happen to live in the area and would like to get together over a coffee or a tea and some collections management chit-chat, drop me a line.
As a former collections manager it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that if you leave a blog mainly unattended for nearly 4 years it gathers dust. Well, not real dust, more… virtual dust?
After some research, I found a Feedburner alternative in follow.it. So, if you receive updates from a different service, now, it is because of that. I hope it works well, if it doesn’t, please let me know.
The next thing that has been on my to-do list for years was finding a theme that works well on mobile devices. This was rather time-consuming and I lost the language-sensitive header and some of the look-and-feel in the process, but I hope this one works well for you. Feedback about it is also appreciated.
Finally, I will probably not be as active as I was a few years back, too many things have changed, but this blog is still around, so if you got interesting stories or articles concerning our profession to share, please, get in touch!
It has been seven years since “Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections” first saw the light of day. Rowman & Littlefield kindly asked me if I want to do a new edition and I am inclined to shout: “Heck, yeah!”
But it has been a long while since the first edition and basically, I said all I had to say back then. So, I am handing it over to you: What do you want to see enhanced? What did you miss? What was unnecessary and can be “deaccessioned” in the new edition?
Also, I like to include more of your stories. Has the book helped you tackling a messy collection? Do you like to write a short real-world example? Please, get in contact, I would be delighted.
Have you used the book and it shows because it is dog-eared and full of notes? Please, I want to see those photos of the book in action! I also would very much like to show them on here.
The world has changed, but some things didn’t. Even after so many years not active here, you can still reach me under angela.kipp AT museumsprojekte.de
With the overtaking of twitter by some people I would rather not be affiliated with, and not making profit of me, I have changed to Mastodon as the friendlier alternative. You can find me there as @registrartrek@glammr.us although I am still in the process of figuring out what and how much I want to do over there.
Ah, yes, the Registrar Trek Blog is its own instance as well, you can get updates by following @admin@world.museumsprojekte.de from your Mastodon account.
Take care and I am looking forward to hearing from you!
accidentally, a test post was sent out earlier today. It was a post set up to experiment with the functionality of this site and, well, yes, it still works. I set it to a date in the future years ago and apparently, the future is today. So, sorry about that!
I suspect this is some kind of sign I should resume work on this site again, but, honestly, I’m still in the process of finding my feet and with family and work being all but unproblematic I have to ask for your patience.
The past year has been not a good one, so I’m looking forward to 2020. For the happier news I was able to do a trip to London and Scotland in September and met a few fantastic colleagues there. I will be leading a course on managing preciously unmanaged collections again, starting February 3 and there are some signs that the 6th Edition of our “bible” Museum Registration Methods will be out this year.
Until I feel able to write again, enjoy a few pictures of my trip.
Best wishes
Angela
My email provider has changed and I know I lost a few emails in the process of changing. From now on, would you all please use: angela.kipp (at) museumsprojekte.de Thanks!
I always loved Scotland and I fell even more in love with it with this trip. I was travelling by train without a real aim apart from meeting people and taking in the atmosphere.
Traveling up North I missed the train to Thurso due to a delay. Scot Rail organized a taxi to catch the missed train. I really wished such a service existed in Germany. Lovely overland trip, too.
One day I found myself on a ferry, heading for the Orkney Islands.
By chance (and by bus) I found myself in St. Margaret’s Hope, a lovely place. If you ever stop by, taste the scallops at the Murray Arms Hotel, the owners are scuba divers and fish them themselves. BTW I took the advice of an inhabitant to “Wait til the sunn cumms uuut” for this picture.
As I was soaked on my way from the Standing Stones I sought shelter and tea at the Maeshowe visitor center and met those lovely fellows. Yes, vikings didn’t have horns on their helmets. But you know what? If they don’t care, neither do I.
As a Whovian, I was very pleased with this discovery in Glasgow (I could argue the thing with the test post had to do with wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff happening, but I guess this reference would probably not convince most of you).
The thing I will remember the most about the trip will probably be the politeness of the people I met. As a representative, take this tea bag that only suggests how to treat it.
Interesting enough, the only highland cattle I met up close lives just about 5 km from my home town in Germany, so that’s that.
The Hausbachklamm near Weiler-Simmerberg, Bernd’s home town.
It is my sad duty to inform you that on March 25, exactly 11 years after his father, 4 days after his 51st birthday, my colleague, partner, soulmate and best friend Bernd passed away, suddenly and unexpected. I’m in the process of recollecting myself and at the moment I can’t carry on taking care of this blog. I hope to get back to it some time in the future, as he always said working on this project made me noticeably happy.
