As you know, I was taken a little by surprise by the publishing of “Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections”. Now, after I recovered, I’d like to celebrate with you, the readers of this blog and faithful supporters. I thought I’d compile a couple of “outtakes”, things and stories that didn’t make it into the book.

The Cover
I received a few compliments for the cover. Thanks a lot. Actually, the first cover looked a little different, as you can see in the picture.
As much as I loved the idea of having something shabby and chaotic and something clean and well-ordered on the cover I thought it didn’t convey the message clear enough, besides the fact that one could assume the bottles were emptied while writing the book…
I experimented with alternative pictures when Bernd, my colleague and significant other said “You know what? I think we can do it better!” A couple of hours later we were equipped with a collection of old toy cars, archival materials and camera equipment. We experimented with different setups which, quite to our surprise, revealed that a bunch of cars bagged and labeled looked a lot more chaotic than a line of cars without labels. So we ended up with the “parking lot of toy cars” you now see on the cover.
For those who desperately tried to match the cars of the picture below the title with the ones above: sorry, the upper ones are German while the lower ones are probably from the U.S. – and they never met each other.

More Stories!

There were a lot of awesome stories about unmanaged collections I heard along the way and I would have loved to publish them all. However, it didn’t always work out. Sometimes there was a change in upper management and people didn’t get permission, sometimes the work contracts ran out before the submission was approved, sometimes life just got in the way in some other form. I hope that I can publish some of these stories here on the blog some time in the future.
However, there was one story that always brought a smile on my face when I thought about it, but one I couldn’t use because… well, I somehow managed to delete that email and that way couldn’t get back to this person to ask permission. And even if I had the mail, I’m not sure if it would have been appropriate to publish it in the book. However, I think here is the time and place to share my smiles:
This person was interviewing for a position to manage an unmanaged collection. When they showed him/her the collection that was, as far as I recall, a shack crammed with objects from roof to floor he/she exclaimed “What the f**k??” Out loud in front of the people responsible for hiring. And got the job.

Curious Corrections!

My dear friend and colleague Darlene Bialowski certaily spent a crazy amount of time on this book project, helping me with corrections and conundrums. More than one time those corrections were not only helpful, but also hilarious. Like, when I discovered that yes, there is such a thing as too much documentation or when I asked her for the correct American term for the German “Sägebock”, sending a picture, and she answered: “‘the best assistant of the non-human variety’ tool I adore is called a ‘sawhorse’.” I don’t know how often I passed this phrase along since then…
When the final proofs came she realized that in one real-world example I used the term “tin can” and until she saw the picture of what it really was she always thought of it as, well, a can in which food is preserved. Only when she saw the picture she realized that it was actually a coffee pot. To correct this ambiguity I nearly ran out of correction signs:

More Pictures!

When I was negotiating the contract the editor told me they would like to have pictures. I was so convinced that no one would be willing to share the crammed shacks of objects that I insisted on no pictures in the contract. To be honest, at this point I wasn’t even sure I could talk anyone into sharing real-world examples in written form…
Then, as I was collecting real-life stories I found many colleagues actually had pictures. Unfortunately now I already told some contributors that I don’t need pictures… I did what I always do when in doubt: I sent a mail to the RC-AAM listserv. I asked if anyone was willing to share their before/after pictures from their collections. I was delighted to receive a whole bunch of awesome unmanaged collections that became managed and most of them made it in the book.
One, however, I received after the deadline. It is Alicia Woods’ favorite picture of the place you will find in the book under the title “Artifact Morgue”:

That mannequin leg sticking out from between the shelves says all about unmanaged collections doesn’t it?

Cheers,
Angela

This post is also available in Russian translated by Helena Tomashevskaya.