Category Archives: Announcements

New Year, New Books

Hi and welcome back on Registrar Trek. Although I am not around that frequently anymore due to real life and also due to my new job, the registrar’s community is still close to my heart.

So, what is going on right now?

I am very glad I can announce that the second edition of Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections is hot off the press. You can get it on a bookstore close by, at Rowman&Littlefield https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538190654/Managing-Previously-Unmanaged-Collections-A-Practical-Guide-for-Museums-Second-Edition or of course over Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Previously-Unmanaged-Collections-Practical-ebook/dp/B0D7R1N7KC/

I did a presentation about what is new with Museum Study LLC in November. You can watch the recording here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s2BOt8S17M

Cover of the second edition of Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections. it has chaotic mussels on the top and organized mussels on the bottom of the title.

I am also very glad that right now negotiations are going on to have it translated into Spanish. Right now it is just a matter of finding a fitting publisher, the translators are at the ready. By the way, this time around I secured the publishing rights for all other languages than English, so if you happen to know an interested publisher in your own language…

I was also very happy to hear from Susan Maltby, who was my conservator’s second pair of eyes in the first edition https://world.museumsprojekte.de/unmanaged-collections-with-a-little-help-from-my-friends/ She has contributed to a great new resource called “Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice”, edited by Cara Krmpotich and Alice Stevenson, that is published as free PDF here: https://uclpress.co.uk/book/collections-management-as-critical-museum-practice/

Cover of Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice, it has a colorful painting in the front that I suspect to be indigenous but didn't find a hint on what it is. The rest of the cover is black.

You’ll find her article “Public art and artefacts – who cares: caring for art and artefacts in the public realm; ethical considerations “ on page 401, but the whole thing is well worth a read. Trying to sum it up would be likely just rewording what is said better by Christina Kreps from the University of Denver, Colorado:

“A groundbreaking volume that critically assesses collections management from alternative perspectives. The book’s contributors destabilize the orthodoxy of “best practices” by shifting the focus to culturally appropriate models of stewardship, pushing for a more integrated, holistic praxis. Reaching beyond the typical domains of collections management, chapters cover the most salient topics in museology today. A “must read” for museum anthropology and museum studies students, practitioners, and scholars.“

A fun thing happened. I got lost in Rome. Okay, no, that is not the fun thing about it, the fun thing is that I missed the right way to the European Registrars Conference and while completely unnecessarily climbing one of those famous hills the city was founded upon, I met another registrar on her way to the conference. While finding our right way together, it turned out that Sandy Esne is more than just a registrar (okay, you could argue that this is more than enough, it is a job for two people, but you know what I mean), in her free time she also writes fiction! Her protagonist Alex Philothea gets herself caught in quite an adventure that involves Ancient Egypt, magic, mysteries, crimes… I am not saying more. You can find her KHNM series here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5NWH5FW

Cover of the fiction book Daughter of Maat. it is blue and shows the columns to a temple. In the middle is a blinding light.

And speaking of books… A friend of mine who isn’t in the museum business (yes, they do exist!) is currently writing a riveting and fun book that has a curator and collections manager as main hero. It also involves Ancient Egypt and the collective registrars’ trauma of a borrowed object suddenly missing from an exhibition. It gets even more nightmarish if you think that a 7 feet statue of Ramses II one morning simply isn’t there anymore. Statues can’t simply walk away. Or can they?

I am a consultant for this project, making sure he doesn’t write something completely off about our profession while giving him enough artistic license to make it still a fun read for the public (Read: I infodump him with long explanations about loan agreements and condition reporting and he then writes “it’s on loan”.). I’ll keep you posted when it is out.

What else is going on? In February I will do my course on Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections for Museum Study LLC https://www.museumstudy.com/managing-previously-unmanaged-collections and there are still seats available. I am looking forward to Collective Imagination, Gallery Systems’ user conference which this time around is “at home” in Berlin and where I will do a few workshops and presentations https://ci.gallerysystems.com/. Otherwise, I am trying not to be too pessimistic about the future, which gets increasingly hard to do, given the current state of the world. But I am trying to focus on the good things and our profession and the sense of community I feel whenever I get a chance to meet some of you is definitely among those.

Have a good start into the New Year 2025!

Angela

Registrar Trek goes Roma and other news from a busy autumn

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.

Street art, graffiti, a lion faces you. It has a punk style mane in Jamaican colors green, yellow and red and wears green glasses. It wears an "urban jungle" necklace and caption left reads "Sei stark" (be strong) and "Bleib sauber" (stay clean)
Street art in Berlin, metro station Kottbusser Tor. Found the artist on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urban_artists_berlin/

In other news, the Second Edition of Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections is on its way. I just did the index, always the thing that has to wait until all the proofreading and typesetting is done. I can promise you it is looking promising: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538190630/Managing-Previously-Unmanaged-Collections-A-Practical-Guide-for-Museums-Second-Edition

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!

Angela

Let’s Talk Unmanaged Collections

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!

Calico cat grabbing computer keyboard

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.

How can you register for it?

Simple. Just send an email to Webinar@MuseumStudy.com

You have a question or idea but don’t want to join or speak at the event

No problem. Just comment on here or email me at angela.kipp@museumsprojekte.de


#unmanagedcollections #wheredoIstart #neglectedcollections #registrartrek

Registrar Trek goes Washington D.C.

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

View on the Capitol and the city of Washington by day from a heightened position.
The Capitol and the city of Washington, image by 12019 via pixabay.

EODEM – It is here! But why should I care?

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!

Logo of the Exhibition Object Data Exchange Model, yellow letters EODEM with an arrow pointing from the E through the O and another coming from the M
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.

You got this!

Angela

Learn more about EODEM:

All about EODEM on the CIDOC website:

EODEM specifications and samples:

Rupert Shepherd keeps you up to date with the development on his personal website:

Update on 2nd edition of Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections – and Registrar Trek goes Aberdeen!

Bild von <a href="https://pixabay.com/de/users/jmclellon-23686126/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=7146389">Jamie McLennan</a> auf <a href="https://pixabay.com/de//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=7146389">Pixabay</a>
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.

Stay hydrated, healthy, and happy, everyone.

Angela

The times they are a-changing

Calico cat grabbing computer keyboardAs 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?

Google discontinued its RSS subscription management service and it took me a while to discover that the updates weren’t delivered via mail anymore, so you might have missed my post asking about what you missed in Managing Previous Unmanaged Collections and what should be incorporated in the next edition.

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!

Take care!

Angela

Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections – Revisited, revised, revamped!

What do you want to see in it?

A calico cat sleeping on a copy of the book Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections
This is important!

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.

Look into a room with a table leaning upright against a window and some saw horses, indistinct clutter lying about.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!

Angela

Hi again!

Dear readers,

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.

Dear readers, fellow registrars and collections specialists,

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.

We even wrote one blog post together which you might enjoy reading again: “Appliances, furniture and beyond – registering technological objects

Hopefully see you soon

Angela

This post is also available in Italian, translated by Marzia Loddo.