The most difficult season for the registrar comes to an end. All the end of year gifts wrapped up, all the loans returned or loan contracts renewed, all the candles replaced with LEDs (seriously, who ever thought mixing real – and usually dry – twigs of pine and fire is a great idea?), the last database entries updated. Time to raise our glasses.
We know the world “outside” is difficult, perhaps more difficult these days than it ever was during our lifetime. But there is also friendship and collaboration across borders, especially in our profession. That’s something to be grateful for. This year sat colleagues from all across Germany, but also from China and Egypt at our kitchen table in the storage and we could exchange thoughts and insights. Maybe the greatest gift is being able to listen and understand each other, even if there are language hurdles and cultural differences.

On behalf of the whole Registrar Trek Team:

Merry Christmas,
A few calm days off and a
Happy New Year 2018!

Angela

Whenever a member of the Registrar Trek Team Member is attending a conference or a similar event to spread the word about our blog project we usually post a “Registrar Trek goes… (Costa Rica, Helsinki, Milan)” message. Well, this time I am attending a conference that takes place at “my” museum, so I can stay where I am: The annual fall meeting of the documentation group of the Deutscher Museumsbund (German Museum Association) will take place October 16-18 at the TECHNOSEUM. I’m all exited to do a presentation on the blog and exchange thoughts with all the colleagues.

See the full conference time table here:
http://www.museumsbund.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/fg-dokumentation-herbst-2017-vorlaeufiges-programm-online.pdf

Best wishes
Angela

I can’t believe it’s 2017 already! Seems like yesterday that we celebrated the third birthday of our project.

2016 was a strange year after all. For me personally it was highly successful, but in the big picture, it was terrible. Terrorist attacks, wars, conflicts, mockeries of elections,… you name it, we could all have done without that. And then, in our own sector, we saw again budget cuts, museums closing, people poorly paid and people with high creativity and potential been let go. Again, we could have done without that.

So, is there any way to have a positive outlook into this new year?

Yes, there is.

We see that many museums and museum professionals work towards the goal of making museums safe spaces for all. We see more and more museum professionals speak up against things that go wrong in this sector, here, let me mention #MuseumWorkerSpeak as an example. And, we see more and more museum professionals finding the courage to speak up against things that go wrong in their communities and in politics. This gives me hope for the New Year.

Now, when we look at this project Registrar Trek, what does the future hold? My past predictions were all more or less off the mark, as all predictions have a tendency to be. But I do hope, that in the new year we will encourage more contributions in forms and articles and stories from around the world. Too be honest, there was a little bit too much “Angela Kipp” stuff on this blog recently. As much as I like my projects like the book and the logger (a new generation of them were installed just before Christmas for a serious test under real-life conditions), this was never the intention of the blog. So here is my wish for this our fourth birthday:

That many, many of you find the courage to sit down to write an article, an observation, a story or a thought for us.

Read you soon!

Angela

A short follow-up to our announcement in September:

Now all recordings of the “Getting a Grip on Collections Management” webinar series are available to listen to on the Connecting to Collections Care website, together with the slides and additional materials for download:

Webinar 1: Basic Condition Reporting

Deborah Rose Van Horn

Basic Condition Reporting

Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections: A Survival Guide for Messes Great and Small

Angela Kipp

Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections: A Survival Guide for Messes Great and Small

Webinar 3: There’s a Form for That: Documenting Your Collections

Beverly Balger Sutley

There’s a Form for That: Documenting Your Collections

Webinar 4: A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place: Conducting (and Maintaining!) a Collection Inventory

Maureen McCormick

A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place: Conducting (and Maintaining!) a Collection Inventory

And there are many, many more helpful and free resources to be discovered in the Connecting to Collections Care Archives: http://www.connectingtocollections.org/archives/

We are delighted to learn that in April this year the Polskie Stowarzyszenie Inwentaryzatorów Muzealnych, Polish Museum Registrars Association, was founded. They have a blog (http://inwentaryzatorzy.blogspot.de/) and already translated two of our articles into Polish:
CIDOC 2016 – W dokumentacji kluczowi są ludzie (“CIDOC 2016 – Documentation is about people” by Angela Kipp) – translated by Marcin Mondzelewski
Rola inwentaryzatora muzealnego w procesie wypożyczania zbiorów (“The Museum Registrar as Loans……” by Derek R. Swallow) – translated by Natalia Ładyka

We wish our Polish colleagues best of luck with their work!

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

There’s a great series of free webinars coming up, organized by the Connecting to Collections Care Online Community (http://www.connectingtocollections.org/). The topics are different aspects of collections management, the webinars run always 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (time zone of New York):

September 15, Webinar 1: Basic Condition Reporting

Deborah Rose Van Horn

Basic Condition Reporting

September 22, Webinar 2: Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections: A Survival Guide for Messes Great and Small

Angela Kipp

Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections: A Survival Guide for Messes Great and Small

September 29, Webinar 3: There’s a Form for That: Documenting Your Collections

Beverly Balger Sutley

There’s a Form for That: Documenting Your Collections

October 4, Webinar 4: A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place: Conducting (and Maintaining!) a Collection Inventory

Maureen McCormick

A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place: Conducting (and Maintaining!) a Collection Inventory

You can either register for each individual webinar on the webinar’s page or you can register for all four webinars here (and earn a Credly badge if you attend them all):

Management 101: Getting a Grip on Collections Management

Of course, I feel especially honored to be part of a series where the other sessions are held by people I’ve been looking up to for years.

Hope to ”see“ some of you there!

Angela

As we are close to the opening of the European Registrars Conference in Vienna, I wanted to send a quick reminder that we are glad to post session reports or general reviews and impressions about the conference at Registrar Trek. We already got some volunteers (thank you so much!) but we also have enough web space to post more reports. 🙂

I’m glad to inform you that Else Prüstner from the Steering Committee dropped me a line saying that the organizers are glad to provide information and help for our reporters. The ARC (Austrian Registrars Committee) colleagues who are with the organizing group will be visible at the conference, so just ask them for assistance if you have questions.

Have a wonderful time!
Angela