Tag Archives: collections management

Focus on what you CAN do, not what you CAN’T

April 4, 2025 RegistrarTrek 3 Comments

In these past few weeks it seems that there were so many horrible things happening that just making a list of them feels overwhelming and exhausting. Some of the decisions of the current U.S. government have an impact on the global level, others hit people personally, some of whom are close friends. And then, there are those who seem to target the very core of our profession, like the shutting down of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the termination of grants already awarded by the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH).

Ninja at a laptop, source: PenClipartVectors via pixabay (CC0)

It is hard not to lose all hope in this climate. And yet, aren’t we, as museum professionals, used to things not really looking pretty? Haven’t we battled budget and staff cuts before? Haven’t we brought uncomfortable truths in front of the eyes of our visitors and politicians before? Maybe the current crisis is not comparable to what we were confronted with before. But just as well, we are well trained in going against adversarial circumstances.

We have always done so with resilience, creativity, and, most of all, a sense of community. We might be spread out across the world and we might have spread ourselves thin by taking on too many responsibilities, but we are not alone. I have reached out to my network over the past few days to check in on some people, see how they are coping, and getting ideas of what can be done, because, in the end, focusing on what can’t be done never made anything better.

Turns out that John E. Simmons had already started collecting what can be done to prepare for what is coming at us in something we registrars love: A list.

I contributed a few of my thoughts to it and we also asked some more colleagues to add to it. What I am posting here today is by no means a comprehensive and finalized list of what to think about and what to do, but it is a start. Feel free to add more ideas in the comments section, just like we enhance it going forward.

What Can We Do?

1. Apply the lessons that museums learned from Covid

A museum should have a plan for suddenly shutting down or having to reduce staff for a prolonged long period of time.
The plan should include cross-training for all staff so that a reduced staff can keep the institution functioning and care for the collections. Every staff member should be trained to do tasks that are normally not part of their duties so that they can help in the event of a prolonged emergency.
The plan should include what the museum can do to remain a destination for visitors during a crisis. This might include regulating the number of visitors in the museum at the any one time during a pandemic, reducing or eliminating admission fees for visitors during a prolonged financial crisis, and how responsibilities could be handled by a reduced staff. It is worth noting that a recent study revealed that art museums that charge admission spend an average of $100 per visitor but attract smaller audiences than free museums, and that there are costs associated with collecting admission fees that may not be recovered by the fee. Details can be found at https://news.artnet.com/art-world/us-museums-visitors-report-2622358).

2. Prepare the collections for long-term, low maintenance storage

by preparing the most sustainable and passive storage environment possible:

Improve the effectiveness of the collection storage furniture, containers, and supports to protect the collections (e.g., replace gaskets on doors, eliminate acidic materials, reduce lighting and UV in storage).
Keep the collection in order (each object in its proper place in storage) at all times (do not allow a backlog of out-of-place objects to build up).
Improve environmental controls and environmental monitoring procedures.
Maintain storage environment equipment in good order (e.g. replace filters, service equipment regularly, replace aging HVAC systems).

3. Protect the databases

Make sure that you have a fully up-to-date, readable copy of all important museum databases stored somewhere outside of the building, preferably in a hard format as well as electronic.
Make sure that both on-site and off-site databases are protected so they cannot be accessed by unauthorized personnel. Renew passwords and other project on a frequent, regular basis.
If the institution is forced to close, and you have a good backup copy, consider removing databases from the museum servers to protect confidential information.
When possible look into storing backup copies of your databases that are not only readable in a proprietary format of one vendor (who might be forced to hand your sensitive data over or might go out of business). If you database allows for it, export your important data as SQL tables or as comma separated values (.csv). Excel formats such as xlsx, xls, or ods are fine, too.
When possible move your sensitive data to trusted servers outside the U.S. that don’t belong to U.S. based companies who might be forced to hand your sensitive data over or delete your data.
As a rule of thumb: make access to your data for your trusted staff as easy as possible, but make deleting data from your database hard by setting up a robust rights management and whenever possible enable procedures to revert to earlier data entry points.

4. Update the institutional emergency preparedness plan

to include procedures for coping with sudden, prolonged shutdowns of the building.

5. Stock up on critical supplies

6. Download anything needed from federal websites

(such as the NPS Museum Handbook and Conserve O Grams or IMLS reports) immediately, while the information is still available. Store this data in a safe place that is only accessible to authorized personnel and make deleting those resources as hard as possible.

7. Keep in mind that most serious problem going forward will probably not be the cuts in federal funding

to the NIH, NEA, NSF, IMLS, etc., because most of this money goes to projects which can be postponed or funded by other sources (such as donations). The most serious problem will be the lack of funds resulting from damage done to the economy due to a combination of the rising deficit, increasing unemployment (e.g., the mass reductions in the federal workforce and corresponding loss of jobs in sectors that serve the federal workforce), and decreased tax revenues due to tax cuts for the wealthy, tariffs on imports, and cuts to social services. In other words, the predicted problems with the US economy are far more likely to be a bigger problem for museums than the loss of federal grant funds.

Words of Cheer:

Museums existed long before the IMLS and other federal granting agencies, so they can survive this period, although many worthy projects and much research will be halted unless alternative funding can be found.
With preparation, museums can survive the coming crisis as they have survived other crises. There will be staff reductions and loss of opportunities, but with any luck, the situation will change within a few years.
Take a good look at your policies and procedures and investigate new laws and executive orders you are confronted with. Laws that are passed in a great hurry often contain contradictions and loopholes. Often asking for clarifications by authorities can slow processes down and work to your advantage. Often stalling a process in good faith can be much more effective than open opposition which puts you and your staff at risk.
Be prepared to be patient. Lawsuits and judicial decisions challenging the proposed changes will take time to go through the courts.
In the longer term, climate change and its effects on museum operations, the economy, and the behavior of the public is the greatest challenge to the future of museums, so the present crisis should be used to prepare for the future.

Best Advice:

If your institution does not have a plan for long-term survival during a financial crisis, the next pandemic, or climate change, get busy now to correct this deficit.

Helpful Information

Learnings museums made from the Covid-19 pandemic, https://www.ne-mo.org/news-events/article/learnings-museums-made-from-the-covid-19-pandemic

PEAS Resource Library (Promoting Exhibit Access and Safety), https://ncp.si.edu/PRICE-PEAS

Snider, Julianne. 2024. The Wheel is Already Invented: Planning for the Next Crisis. Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals 20(2):347-359, DOI: 10.1177/15501906241232309

Living in a Wild Future (Center for the Future of Museums blog), https://www.aam-us.org/2025/03/04/living-in-a-wild-future/

Decrease in Public Funding? A Worldwide Answer from Museums (ICOM), https://icom.museum/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IRAPFM-A4-Format_FINAL.pdf

Susana Smith Bautista (2021)—How to Close a Museum. A Practical Guide (Rowman & Littlefield)

Here is an additional list of resources in case you have to close down your institution: https://world.museumsprojekte.de/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/ResourcesMuseumsClosing.pdf

Christopher J. Garthe (2023)—The Sustainable Museum. How Museums Contribute to the Great Transformation (Routledge)

Some more notes

Share this resource freely with anyone you think needs to see this, no need to ask for permission. Add what applies to your special case. Let us know what we should add. Download, save, print, circulate.

Download List as PDF

Registrar Trek is hosted on a server in Germany and following EU laws. I am currently looking through all the plug-ins I use to make sure none of them collects and shares any personal data with the U.S. Or, in fact, anybody. I always was mindful not to collect any personal information but will double-check again if everything is safe.

Hang on in there, you are not alone!

Announcements

Heads up: Bug when buying Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections from Amazon

March 11, 2025 RegistrarTrek Leave a comment

A box with a stash of copies from managing previously unmanaged collections

Two things happened today:

I finally got my author’s copies of Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections and I was notified that there is a problem with ordering the book from Amazon:

When you are ordering from Amazon.com and you are on the website of the paperback https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Previously-Unmanaged-Collections-Practical/dp/1538190648/ and then click on the “Kindle” version you are directed to the old 2016 edition of the book.

Conversely, if you go to Amazon in Germany or the UK and are on the “Kindle” version https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Angela-Kipp-ebook/dp/B0D7R1N7KC/ and then switch to the paperback version you get the old version of the paperback.

Just a heads-up, since I learned today that people bought the old version by accident that way.

I do, however recommend buying from your local bookshop or directly from the publisher (https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538190630/Managing-Previously-Unmanaged-Collections-A-Practical-Guide-for-Museums-Second-Edition) anyway.

Announcements

Egypt Calling is out!

February 16, 2025 RegistrarTrek Leave a comment

You might remember that in my New Year’s post I announced that a friend of mine is working on a book with a collections manager as main character, right? Guess what? It is out!

I am low-key proud that me talking about our profession so passionately inspired it. Well, kinda, we were touching the topic every now and then. Like the conversations with him and two friends of us (one writes horror and mystery, the other a fantasy) often go, it derailed completely from how something disappearing from a museum is among a registrar’s worst nightmares to the thought of what would happen if you realize one bright, new, early morning that, well, a whole seven feet high statue has simply disappeared from your well-guarded grounds.

Paul tackled the topic with his usual sense of humor and unusual talent for creating quirky characters. I added some reality check to it while at the same time granting enough artistic license to let it stay a riveting tale instead of becoming a novel about museum policies, loan procedures, and conflict of interest that it probably had become if I had written it. It kept me on the edge of my seat and laughing out loud so I highly recommend it, although my view is of course not really neutral.

Fun fact: While he wrote it, it inspired me to write a few chapters of a spin-off story where another statue, Leonardo, finds himself suddenly alive as a collateral damage of the events in the book. It is written from Leonardo’s point of view and you can imagine that it is quite confusing to find yourself standing on a pedestal in the middle of a museum. Especially if you haven’t been alive before. Ever. And your head is marble. This makes thinking…hard. Leonardo and his friend Betty, barista extraordinaire, even make a guest appearance in Paul’s book.

Anyway, in these dire times I feel we can all use some lighthearted humor and Egypt Calling provides you with plenty of it. If you are up for it, I here is the start of Leonardo’s story.

Egypt Calling is available here and in all bookstores: https://paulkater.com/egypt-calling.html

Articles

A Beetle Is Not A Coffee Cup – Why Moving Natural History Collections Is Not Like Moving House

April 3, 2024 RegistrarTrek 2 Comments

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. The insects are sitting on a acid free cardboard which is pinned with the accompanying label to the drawer or showcase. — 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.

Perhaps this article can help a bit with that.

Angela Kipp

Announcements, Articles

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

October 15, 2023 RegistrarTrek Leave a comment

EODEM 1.0, the Exhibition Object Data Exchange Model, was officially released on September 1^st. 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.

You got this!

Angela

Learn more about EODEM:

All about EODEM on the CIDOC website:

EODEM

EODEM specifications and samples:

EODEM – Specifications and samples

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

EODEM update 8 – launch

Announcements, Articles, Book: Unmanaged Collections

Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections – Revisited, revised, revamped!

April 10, 2023 RegistrarTrek 1 Comment

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.

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

Toolbox

Favorite Tools: The Wet-Dry Vacuum Cleaner

October 12, 2018 RegistrarTrek Leave a comment

Or: Some heroes wear nozzles!

I wanted to do a series on a registrar’s favorite tools in a while but somehow never have gotten around doing it. As I have written in a previous post this summer surprised us with heavy rain falls and so I decided that I’ll start this one of with the unsung hero of leaking roofs, pipe bursts and badly shutting gates: The wet-dry vacuum cleaner.

As the name suggest, they are usually outfitted to do both: to vacuum water AND dry stuff. But here’s the thing: they can only do one of those things at once. Therefore, it’s usually preferable to assign one vacuum cleaner for wet-only use. If you can’t afford two vacuum cleaners, I’d suggest making sure this one is always emptied at the end of the working day, so you don’t accidentally end up with a tank full of muddy dust, grime and sawdust that is nearly impossible to empty.

Now, what should you consider when buying a wet-dry vacuum cleaner? They come in a wide range of prices and functionalities, so it is like always a big “depends”. But here are some thoughts:

Capacity is often a big factor for the price, so you should ask yourself which scenario is most likely to happen. The occasional leaking roof is a big risk for the artifacts but usually just leaves small water puddles. So, a small tank with a capacity of only 10 to 20 liters will probably be enough, even if it means you have to go a few times and empty it. If your usual suspect is an insufficient drain system that leads to water coming back from the sinks and the toilets (yuck!) as soon as there is slightly more rain than usual, you probably need a larger tank. If this happens on a regular basis or large amounts of water are involved, you might want to look for a sump pump and the installation of a backflow trap.

Next, you should consider handling. The picture on the right shows the one I have at home. As I bought it mainly to help with keeping the workshop tidy, I gave less thought on its ability to vacuum water. The thing is that in order to empty the tank, you have to remove the whole top. And, as it doesn’t have a handle or separate outlet for the water, all you can do is lift it up somehow and empty it to the drain, which is quite an effort given its capacity of 20 liters. The vacuum cleaner in our storage, the yellow one you see in the top picture, has a handle that allows you to operate the tank just like a bucket (with wheels!) once you have removed the top, which makes it much easier to tilt and empty it over a drain. Even better: it has a drain plug at the bottom that allows to empty it without having to remove the top or tilt it altogether.

Speaking of wheels: if you do have to move your vacuum cleaner over larger distances and uneven ground how good the wheels are and how easy it is to move around can also be a determining factor in your buying decision.

One thing closely related to handling is the response time. As I said at the beginning it’s always best to have your vacuum cleaner for wet-only use. But if you can’t have one what it takes to convert your dry into a wet vacuum cleaner can determine your decision. For example: With my blue one, I have to remove the filter bag and the filter cartridge and put a special textile bag which serves as a fine filter over the motor before I can vacuum water. If I miss that step, I will destroy the vacuum cleaner. With the yellow one I’m good to go as soon as I have removed the filter bag. I do have to remember, however, that in this case I’m NOT allowed to remove the filter cartridge as it is necessary to protect the motor and if I do it like I would do with my vacuum cleaner at home I would inevitably destroy the device.

Closely related is the question if the vacuum cleaner can be operated in all corners of your storage or museum. So, how long the power cord is can be a factor in your decision. But even if your vacuum cleaner does have a rather long power cord, chances are that it is still not sufficient for that special far away corner of your storage. You may want to test out the action radius of your vacuum cleaner BEFORE the first incident and want to store it together with a cable drum of sufficient length.

Another important question is maintenance. This involves how easy it is to clean and to repair. You sometimes see no-name vacuum cleaners at a bargain price, but you should take a close look at the parts that are most likely to get lost or broken. The nozzles, for example, should be a standard size you get in every DIY store, not some exotic caliber that is a standard in the North-Western Black Forest. Same with the bags, filters and screws. All parts should be easy to disassemble and clean because you will inevitably suck some strange thing in that will get stuck half way in the hose. In that case it should be easy to remove the hose and clean it.

Some “Gotcha!” things are not so obvious: For example, I talked about leaving the filter cartridge in place with our yellow one. Now, here’s the thing: Of course, the cartridge, which is made of some sturdy paper plastics mixture, gets wet when I vacuum water. In order to dry it, I have to remove it after use. One thing is that I have to remember to put it back or the next one who uses the vacuum cleaner will destroy it. And the other is that I’m not completely comfortable having a soaking wet paper thingy around my storage because I always fear mold. I probably consider how this problem is solved in future purchases.

Your own vacuum cleaner will probably need some special skills we haven’t considered so far. Maybe you do have a lot of water in your storage occasionally but also sometimes only small puddles. In this case you might want to look for a vacuum cleaner which can also be operated as a pump by adding an additional hose for transporting the water directly to a drain. Or you have water in hard to reach places, so you might want to look for a model that has a telescopic suction tube or multiple attachable suction tubes to reach there. Sometimes being able to turn the device to blow instead of suck can come in handy (our yellow one has that functionality). Whatever it is, make sure your superhero has all the superpowers it needs!

It’s a favorite tool I wish you all will never need to use in an emergency!

Stories

Registrar’s Shoes – More Thoughts on Professional Footwear

June 30, 2017 RegistrarTrek 5 Comments

Working as a registrar might require unexpected skills: Like being all dressed up for the big opening and still be able to deliver a cart of desperately needed tools to the mount-maker.
Thanks to Lisa Kay Adam for the picture.

Three things happened in the last four weeks:

1. I changed offices and decided t get rid of my very first safety boots.
2. My current summer safety boots died the usual unpleasant death that awaits all my safety boots.
3. I re-read the piece about shoes at conferences by Janice Klein.

It inspired me to write a piece about a registrar’s working shoes. It’s the same problem like with shoes for conferences, only worse. As a registrar in a small museum you need to be one moment on the top of the ladder, exchanging the light bulb, at the next moment guiding a group of students and yet the next moment shake hands with the president of your university.

As a registrar in a larger museum, you are not really better off: You have to walk miles in the gallery spaces, again climb ladders and if you enter visitor’s spaces you should look halfway presentable.

Each task requires different clothing and it is likely that you have several working outfits in your locker. Along with them there is an army of different working shoes, from rubber boots for the annual springtime water leak in the cellar to high-heels that fit your evening dress for events. A male registrar’s arsenal might be slightly smaller, but I don’t know a single registrar who can work with just one pair of shoes.

There are some advantages of being a collections manager at a science and technology museum.

As a collection manager in a science & technology museum with the history of working conditions in its mission, I’m slightly better off. I decided a long time ago that I’m a living representation of working conditions and therefore usually wear working attire no matter what (with a few exceptions, like opening ceremonies and lectures). However, this comes with a downside:

Because I wear my safety boots almost every time at work they tend to die an unpleasant death within a timespan of about a year to a year and a half. This is a problem because a the same time it’s incredibly hard to find safety boots in size 37 (U.S. size 6 1/2). My very first safety boots – the ones I ditched and which are still under consideration to be accessioned for our collection of working clothes – were 36 (5 1/2) because I couldn’t find safety boots my size on the market. The first two years of my career I worked in boots that were too small. In fact, according to a friend, they were the “cutest little safety boots I ever saw”. So, everytime a pair of boots start to show signs of weakness, I search frantically for new ones my size. An exhausting race against time.

Fortunately, this time I’m spared: my niece has exactly the same shoe size and gave me the safety boots she got for her summer job. As she graduated to become an elementary school teacher last year, she doesn’t need them anymore.

Always keep your feet on the ground!
Angela

And for your amusement: A gallery of shoes that were killed in action:

Light summer safety shoe, bought 2015. The seam that tied the leather to the sole snapped and the leather ripped. Probably due to the stress imposed on this part of the shoe by standing on my toes frequently. To make matters worse, I often need the fine feeling of my toes to give the forklift truck the exactly right dose of gas when handling a delicate load. A former more sturdy all-year safety boot, I think it was the 2007/2008 one, died exactly the same way.

The most common way my safety boots die is however that the sole becomes so thin that they start to leak. You usually realize this when you are standing in a puddle of water. If it’s a dry season, you realize it when you suddenly feel every stone you walk over like you walk barefoot.

This is the shoe that died the most spectacular way. These were pretty good light hiking shoes I loved to wear when there were no heavy duty jobs that require safety boots, only light work that requires a lot of walking. In the middle of an exhibit installation in 2011 parts of the sole literally fell off.

Got boots that died a similar – or more spectacular -way? Share your photos and send them along with their story to story@museumsprojekte.de!

Articles

Mercury – A Tale of the Importance of Good Documentation

May 29, 2017 RegistrarTrek 15 Comments

It’s a strange thing. The topic of hazardous materials in collections pops up every once in a while but as human beings we tend to forget about it because we consider that – of course – we know these hazards are there, but, then again, we are rather sure we know our own collection well and that if we act according to our safety precautions we are safe.
When mercury was found in the air in one of our storage areas during a pollutant analysis, I was shocked and surprised. Of course I knew we had mercury in our collection. We own a considerable number of thermometers and mercury switches. But until this day I considered our handling instructions and other precautions safe enough. This mercury was all contained, right? Yes, it was. But we never had thought of other sources, open sources that were hidden in our collection.

Discovering open sources of mercury & lessons learned

Automatic organ containing open mercury source (sorry for the poor quality of the pcture).

As we started to research our objects through the lens of “mercury” we discovered that, in fact, there were a couple of objects we never thought of. It turned out that there was an automatic organ which operated with contacts that dipped into mercury in some ceramic containers. In our medical history collection we had devices for counting thrombocytes in blood samples that operated with open mercury. However small, given that mercury evaporates at room temperature, even small outlets are an issue! There were barometers and even chronometers with open mercury sources. It was quite an effort to find out which sources we had. Even more to either remove or contain the mercury and seal and label the contaminated objects properly.
We learned quite a few lessons along the way:

Never assume you know everything about your collection
Never assume your policies and procedures cover every aspect
Never assume that you are safe, keep an eye on recent research

But maybe the most important lesson was about the importance of good documentation. And we learned it the hard way.

All expert knowledge at hand, but still…

Looking back, if someone had thoroughly researched the working principles of said objects, he or she would have discovered that they needed mercury to work. We don’t know if someone knew this when the objects were acquired. At least whoever did it, didn’t mention that they contained mercury in the documentation and the catalog entry.

Mercury switch inside of the automatic organ

It’s the disconnected working processes that are the real health hazard here! When we look at the classical museum setting there are different people with different knowledge involved in the documentation process. People whose skillsets are perfect matches but all their knowledge is useless if it isn’t interlinked in the workflow:
The curator might know best that mercury was necessary to make an object work, but might not be aware that mercury is a problem. The conservator has, due to his or her education, deep knowledge about dangerous substances but not about the object and might not see the object before it is stored if it is in good condition. Even if he or she checks its condition before it goes off to storage, the mercury might be hidden inside, so the conservator isn’t aware of the danger. The collections manager has some knowledge about dangerous substances but not about the object and might not be able to spot the danger if it isn’t widely known to his/her profession (like arsenic in taxidermied specimen is). The database manager has the knowledge about how to make dangerous substances retrievable in the database and maybe even know how to label them properly, but again, as he or she doesn’t have knowledge about the object, he or she doesn’t know there’s a problem.
Although all the experts work for the same institution, if they don’t assess the object together and bring their knowledge together, they are likely to overlook a danger and impose a health risk on colleagues, future researchers and visitors.

The importance of knowledge in cataloging

It is also obvious how dangerous it is when whoever is doing the catalog entry doesn’t have indeep knowledge about the objects. There is a tendency in museums to think that cataloging is a task that can be done by “whoever”. Knowledge isn’t important, every intern can key in a short description and some measurements, right? Of course we all know that’s nonsense, but arguing against it is tough. It’s hard to communicate what damage it does if dates, measurements and categorizations aren’t correct. With hazardous materials the danger should be obvious: someone doing the catalog entry who hasn’t enough knowledge to understand the working principles is likely to overlook the danger and therefore imposes a life threat to his or her colleagues and visitors.
If the curator can’t do the catalog entry him-/herself for a good reason (And: no, being too lazy/old/busy to learn how to do it isn’t a good reason, at least in my book!) he or she has to share his/her knowledge about the object with whoever does the catalog entry.

How to do it better

Objects containing mercury labeled according to international standards.

There are a few things that can be done to avoid unpleasant surprises:

When an object is acquired, consult with everyone involved in the process. All the expert knowledge at one table will help to discover as many potential hazards as possible.
If you are a one woman/man museum, make sure to reach out to experts in your area, your regional museum association or international experts via listservs and online groups to learn about the possible dangers your new acquisition contains.
If the hazard is new, define safety precautions in handling and storage. If the hazard is long known, make sure your handling and storage precautions are still up to date with current research.
In the database: make sure the hazardous material is named. In an ideal setting you do have a thesaurus of dangerous substances to pick from which are linked to safety precautions and correct labeling.
In the database: make sure an object that contains dangerous substances is clearly distinguishable from other objects so everybody is aware that there might be special handling and storage precautions.
In the storage: label dangerous substances according to international standards.
In the storage: store hazardous materials according to the safety precautions. This might involve special containers or rooms with a ventilation system and handling instructions clearly visible on the container.

Live long and prosper!
Angela Kipp