Tag Archives: #MuseumDocumentation

Registrar Trek goes Mastodon

Update January 19th, 2025: In the light of the TikTok ban and Instagram blocking links to the Fediverse, I will soon post a second article about the bigger picture of the Fediverse, about different parts that cover different needs and are open source like Mastodon. There are alternatives for Instagram, Youtube, Facebook… but I found it would likely be overwhelming to cover them in this already lengthy article.


I avoid becoming political on here but I believe in democracy, equality, and that everybody should have the freedom to live their own life the way they please as long as they are not doing something that keeps others from doing the same. I also believe in the importance of honesty, science as a way to understand what is going on in our world and decency in treating our fellow living beings, including humans.

That said, it is obvious why I can’t stay on Twitter anymore, no matter how many connections I lose by shutting down the account. And yes, I will continue to call it Twitter as long as its owner refuses to acknowledge the name change of his own daughter.

I know that many see Bluesky as the new alternative but I don’t think that’s a viable option because while theoretically decentralized, practically it is still defined by one company and, in effect, one person, and we just see with Twitter and Meta where that leads to. Instead, I will go to Mastodon, where I already created an account in 2022 when Musk took over.

You will find me as @registrartrek@glammr.us

If some of you consider the same but don’t know how to start, here are some things I learned (I am also there with another personal account since 2022):

It all starts with picking a server and this seems to be the biggest hurdle for most. You will find a list of servers here: https://joinmastodon.org/de/servers or you can look up servers that seem to suit you and create an account there. For example, if you navigate to https://glammr.us/@registrartrek you will see my feed (I wasn’t very active so far but that’s true for my professional social media in general). On the left side you see my server and what it is it about.

Screenshot from the instance @registrartrek@glammr.us Important details will be mentioned in the text. For current impression go to https://glammr.us/@registrartrek
To the left you see the server details including administrator, current users, and a description that states: “glammr.us is a space for folks interested in galleries, libraries, archives, museums, memory work and records. But you don’t only have to post about GLAMMR-related topics, bring your whole self!”. In the middle is my profile and – if you are on the page and scroll – my posts. At the right hand side you can create your own account.

Mastodon is a city

The concept of “servers” sounds a bit foreign perhaps, and many people fear they will narrow their options by deciding for a server, so, let’s think of it a bit differently. Let’s say Mastodon is the city you want to move to. The servers are all the streets in this city. You look at several streets, at what other people live there, what shops are in there, what the general “atmosphere” of it is. This will be your new neighborhood so you want to make sure you will feel at home and safe there.

How can you learn about your new neighborhood? A good place to start is looking at the server rules. Those you find in the “about” section in the left hand column here:

Screenshot from the GLAMMR.US server rules. The important things are mentioned in the text. They can be found here for full context: https://glammr.us/about

You will see if the rules of your street and see if this looks like a description of a place you would like to live in. And of course, you might know other people who already moved into a street and talk to them about how they like it.

Once you find a street that suits you, you will move into a house there by creating an account. And you will get an address so people can reach you. My address is @registrartrek@glammr.us because I am called registrartrek and I live in glammr.us street.

Many people fear that once they picked a server, they won’t be able to follow people on another server. This isn’t true. Of course you can visit people in other streets once you moved into a city! Streets are connected to other streets so you can move around the city. The same is true for Mastodon. There is a caveat, though: you already had a look at your street/server’s rules. Your street might have decided not to build a bridge to a bad neighborhood whose inhabitants display a behavior that contradicts their rules. They might even have destroyed a bridge when it turned out that too many people from the other street came over and harassed people in your street. In Mastodon terms: the general idea is that servers federate with other servers – which means nothing else than that streets connect to other streets. But at the same time it has a long-established culture of taking care of their citizens, so every street will decide which other streets they want to connect/federate to and also to defederate (destroy the bridge) if they see behavior from another street they deem unacceptable.

Setting up your address/house

With this knowledge, you simply click on “create an account” and follow the steps just like you would do on any other social media site. There are servers that are completely open and you will get access right away. Many other servers are set up in a way you have to be either approved by the server admin or need an invite by someone who already is on the server. While this is a small hurdle it helps with keeping spammers and known harassers out. If you want an invite to my “street” glammr.us just drop me a line under story@museumsprojekte.de and I’ll send you one (due to work and other stuff I don’t know if I am really faster than the server admin, though).

By the way, you can still move to another street later. If you find out you like another street better, you can pack up your things (or your followers) and move there. There is an import/export function available.

Getting to know your neighborhood

Once you settled into your new home and hung the curtains… Heck, I don’t have to explain to you how to set up a profile on social media, right? You have done that all your life. But let’s look around and get to know your neighborhood.

The live feeds screen showing the current local feed from RegistrarTrek on glammr.us. Important things are mentioned in the text. To get the current impression go to https://glammr.us/public/local

On the right hand side you see “Live Feeds” and if you click on that, you have the tab “This server” that shows you all the posts from all other people who are on the same server. Meaning: the more the people, topics, and culture on the server you picked resonate with your own, the more likely you will find interesting stuff and people to follow here. If you want to explore more, you can click on “Other Servers” which will give you the posts of all servers connected to your own, so, basically the chatter of all the people in all the other streets – minus the ones your street has burned the bridge to. If this is still not enough, the “All” tab shows you EVERYTHING that is going on on all the servers everywhere, so the whole Mastodon city. Ugh, that’s too much, let’s click back to your own timeline, which you see if you click on “Home”.

When you just have settled into your new home, this timeline will be empty. It will fill up with the posts from people and hashtags you follow pretty soon.

Meeting you neighbors

So, you moved into this street but people still don’t know you and you don’t know people. If you are lucky, you already know a person in the same street or at least in the city. Start by posting my address @registrartrek@glammr.us into the search field and click the “follow” button. Hi! Now my posts will appear in your timeline. You can do the same with @admin@world.museumsprojekte.de and all the posts from this blog will appear in your timeline.

That’s nice, but you already know me. You can click on my profile and see who I am following and who follows me. You might find some of those interesting and follow them, too.

But that’s the equivalent to inviting me to a housewarming party. You get to know a handful of people I know but this is by far not the whole neighborhood. You still don’t know which bakery makes the best croissants and which bar has decent margaritas, so to speak.

Next up, follow a few hashtags with stuff you are interested in. I still hope we can get #MuseumDocumentation to its old strength, for example. So, you type that in the search box and you will see people who have used it as well as a tab “hashtag”. If you click on that, you get a list of hashtags that contain the word, you can follow it and every post that contains #MuseumDocumentation will appear in your Home timeline. There is also #croissants and #SilentSunday, by the way. Hashtags make the world go round in this city of Mastodon so use them in your own posts and don’t be afraid of following many. You can still weed out later once your Home timeline gets too crowded.

Screenshot from the hashtag section of #MuseumDocumentation with the "follow hashtag" button. You get the current one here https://glammr.us/tags/MuseumDocumentation

Say “hi”

Next up you might want to tell everybody you moved here and who you are. For that, you might want to create a post about who you are, using the hashtag #introduction and tell people a bit about you. Don’t forget to add hashtags about stuff you are interested in, you might find like-minded folks you never thought about.

Introduction post from Registrar Tek with a very annoyed kitty sitting on a copy of Managing Previously Unmanged Collections. See full post here https://glammr.us/@registrartrek/110174167592935573

And since people might want to look at your profile to know you better and you don’t want to repeat yourself, you pin it to your profile. On most servers you can pin more than one post, on glammr.us you can pin up to five.

Oh, and don’t be afraid to just comment on someone else’s post you liked. This platform is much more driven by conversation than other places (more in the next section). Don’t be afraid to ask and talk to people.

Decentralized and no algorithm – what does it mean?

You might have heard that Mastodon is a decentralized network of independent servers and doesn’t have algorithms in place but it might be a bit nebulous what that means in your day-to-day interactions. So, here are some thoughts in a nutshell:

  • The servers are run by individuals or groups who are mainly doing this with their own money without commercial interest. Which means you won’t see advertisement on most servers. Which is pretty unique in a day and age where even your operating system might try to sell you something.
  • You might consider a donation to your server admin to help with the cost because of the first bullet point.
  • Twitter and other company owned platforms operate with algorithms to prioritize some posts over others. Wonder why you see Musk’s face so often when you go to Twitter? Yeah, that’s the reason. They also analyze how often a post is liked and more likes get a higher priority than posts with fewer likes. On Mastodon that isn’t the case. Here, when you go to your timeline you see all the posts from people and hashtags you follow in chronological order, nothing else. Nobody is more important than the other.
  • Elaborating on this: If you like a post on Mastodon what you do is you tell the one who has posted you liked what they said. Nothing more, nothing less. Your followers won’t get informed that you liked a post from somebody else.
  • If you want your followers to see a post you found interesting, what you have to do is boost it. On twitter this was called retweeting, boosting is nothing else, it transports the post into the timeline of the people who follow you. Again, the only difference: no algorithm is looking how often a toot is boosted to shove it into someone’s face who doesn’t want to see it.
  • Oh, by the way, you can actually edit posts, so if you became wiser after posting, for example because someone corrected you in a comment, you can happily go back to your original post and make the change. Those who have interacted with your post before will get notified of the change (if they haven’t disabled that option to declutter their notifications).

Culture

The atmosphere of Mastodon can vary depending on your server and who you follow. In general, I found it much more pleasant than on twitter but so far there are only a few museum professionals on, so I miss the active exchange that we had on there. But that is a question of who is active, it has nothing to do with the platform itself.

In general, there is a culture that values inclusion and this means that it is nearly like an unwritten rule to add alt-text when you post an image or gif so visually impaired people also get a sense of what your image is about.

If you post about sensitive topics – or even just a spoiler to a current TV episode or movie – there is a feature to place a Content Warning (CW) to your post. What it does: It displays just what you have written as a warning and your post only gets visible if you click on it. It might be mandatory to place content warnings for certain topics on your server. Check the about page to see them and make sure you follow them.

Pointer to the Content Warning symbol on Mastodon under a post
Post written with CW "Post contains rude language" and post content "This is a bullshit post."
Post like it appears on the timeline only as "Post contains rude language"

If you get harassed by another user, report the abusive post and it will reported to the administrator of your server who can then check and take appropriate measures. How this is handled varies by server so if this is just run by one person it might take longer than if your server has a moderation team. But, by and large, I found them far more responsive than in other places, especially since on some platforms hate speech, sexual harassment, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and lies are now acceptable behavior.

In conclusion

Although I wasn’t very active on the Mastodon account of Registrar Trek before I plan to be more in the future. But this, of course, will also depend on other people wanting to join in. See you there?

Angela

Footnotes/Further Readings

Fedi.Tips gives a good overview of features and how things are supposed to work.

A Beginner’s Guide to Mastodon by Tamilore Oladipo is also pretty good and adds a bit of context.

https://buffer.com/resources/mastodon-social

This is pretty much what I said in less words with some things I didn’t mention like private messaging.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/24/what-is-mastodon

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.

How do I catalogue a smartphone app?

By Paul Rowe

Some app symbolsTraditionally museum collections were made of physical items covering everything from beetles to books, and archives to artworks. Photography collections consisted of the analogue works – negatives or prints of the photographs. The items being added to museum collections are increasingly born-digital works such as photographs taken on a digital camera or films recorded on a smartphone.

We recently had a question on our users’ forum asking for advice on how to catalogue a smartphone app. How do born-digital works fit within the traditional museum cataloguing process? Where do you start with more complex acquisitions such as software package or app?

Here are some general tips about cataloguing born-digital objects, as well as some notes on multimedia material that you might only have in analogue form (such as reels of film).

Link the source digital files

When cataloguing any born-digital works you should link the digital files directly into the catalogue. These could include a high resolution original image and smaller images derivatives if they’re used by your system. For a smartphone app, you may be able to link to still images from the user interface or a trailer/help video about the app.

You may also be able to link to web addresses for the digital material, such as GitHub source code page or Wikipedia page describing a more complex digital item such as a smartphone app.

Many systems will be able to automatically import metadata from linked files so that you have detail including creation dates and capture equipment, dimensions and duration.

Use the standard object cataloguing fields

Many of the fields used to describe traditional collections will still apply to multimedia material, including born-digital files. Typical fields that you might use are:
Object Type: a simple description of the type of material. e.g. Sound Recording, Smartphone app.

Measurements: if you don’t have duration as metadata directly in the digital file then running time and digital file sizes could be noted in the catalogue record.
Size Category: analogue film stock is usually stored in standard can sizes. These could be created as standard size categories in your system.
Display Requirements: describe the equipment required to play the recording or to use the app.
Format: e.g. Digital Video Disc, 35mm colour film, iOS app
Sound: e.g. Dolby 5.1
Colour: Technicolor
Scale: e.g. 4:3 or 1200px x 900px.
Timecodes: You can note the start and end time within an audio or video file of key clips or episodes. Each start and end time should have title or description noting the subject of the clip.
Special Features: Note features available on a commercial film release or special attributes of a software package or app.
Technical Details: Note any important technical details such as DVD Zone or Video codec.

Carriers versus Titles

Large audio or video collections often include multiple copies of the same recording. Each copy is often referred to as a Carrier. An example would be film, which the organisation may hold as a 16mm master copy, and as an analogue VHS and digital DVD copy for lending.
For larger catalogues it can be worth splitting the catalogue detail into a title record and linking this to multiple related carrier records. The title record captures the intellectual description (the title, who made it, when and where was it made). The carrier records describe details of the copies (what format are they in, where are they stored, what loans and conservation work have they been involved in). This is a more complex structure and is only necessary when large numbers of duplicate copies are managed.

Vernon CMS

This article was as a result of a question specifically about using Vernon CMS to catalogue a smartphone app. Our tips should be applicable to many similar cataloguing systems. You can read more about the Vernon Collection Management System on www.vernonsystems.com.


Paul Rowe is CEO of Vernon Systems, an New Zealand-based collections management software company. Vernon Systems develops software to help organisations record, interpret and share their collections. Paul is particularly interested in the use of web-based systems within museums and increasing public access to museum collection information. He is occasionally seen caving.

Mercury – A Tale of the Importance of Good Documentation

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).
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
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.
Objects containing mercury labeled according to international standards.
There are a few things that can be done to avoid unpleasant surprises:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. In the storage: label dangerous substances according to international standards.
  7. 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

CIDOC 2016 – Documentation is About People

As I was sorting my notes from the CIDOC conference in Milano1 I discovered that, unlike my notes from other conferences, it was hard to separate the sessions from one another and to separate my personal conversations with colleagues from the presentations and discussions at the conference. So, I gave up on summarizing the different sessions I attended and took a look at the big picture. Was there a leading theme, something that played a part in all sessions and discussions? Well, yes, there was, and, a little bit to my surprise it wasn’t something like “we need to contextualize our data more” or “we need better standards” or “we need to do more marketing for our profession”. The leading theme – at least for me – was: “Good documentation starts with people doing it and is only good if it is useful for people.”

Colleagues enjoying the opening ceremony of ICOM 2016 Milano at Castello Sforzesco.
Colleagues enjoying the opening ceremony of ICOM 2016 Milano at Castello Sforzesco.

Take the presentation of Alexandre Matos about implementing standards in some museums in São Paulo: the translation of the SPECTRUM standard into Portuguese, the localization of it for the local needs and the implementation of some of the standards in three museums was made possible by people doing it – included, and maybe the most important of all, by people in the State Secretary who were convinced that having standards in museum documentation is a good and necessary thing. How many good projects towards professionalization in our sector are blocked because officials don’t deem them necessary?

It’s the same with other projects like developing a combined and enhanced textile thesaurus out of the diverse ones that already exist at the HTW in Berlin, or the “International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF)” (http://iiif.io/) developed in Yale to support the work of researchers, or the experiences from automating processes in a museum library in Zambia. It all comes down to people who take the initiative to improve existing processes or to develop new ones – and not simply for the joy of doing it, but with their audiences and colleagues in mind.

Presentation ”Spreading the word: explaining what Museum Documentation is - and why it is important“ (photo via @CIDOCevents)
Presentation ”Spreading the word: explaining what Museum Documentation is – and why it is important“ (photo via @CIDOCevents)
As a collections manager among documentalists I halfway expected that I would feel strange. After all, while I use our database often, my job is more about taking an object out of the location it tells me than about thinking about thesauri and definitions. But I discovered that the topics discussed where highly relevant to my own work. Maybe it struck me most in the presentation “Mind the gaps: missing connections in museum documentation” given by Michael Jones. He described the issue that in research there are often missing links because you either search for something in the archives or in the object database or in the picture archive, but you don’t find the relations between the items found. So, while you might find the diary of an expedition in the archives, you might miss that there are specimen found during this expedition in the storage area and pictures of the crew in the picture archive. It struck me, because it’s one thing we do often in our own database in the TECHNOSEUM. Whenever I find a connection between two artifacts I will document this connection in our database. When we have archival material about an object or it is mentioned in a book it is often already referenced in the object catalog entry. If an object was shown in a special exhibition, you will find the label text in our database. I always took this high amount of interlinking done for granted, nothing I gave a second thought. It was only here, at the CIDOC conference, that I learned that this isn’t something that goes without saying. And again, the reason that it is available are people. People working in documentation at the TECHNOSEUM who chose a database software that was able to provide such linking between different categories of material and who created field sets and implemented processes that make it easy for everybody to make such connections.

A project that immediately grabbed my attention and fascinated me was the “Encyclopaedia of Museum Practice” (http://cidoc-dswg.org/ ) that was initialized by Jonathan Whitson-Cloud. It is a project aimed at developing a multilingual wiki on museum terminology so everybody working in the field all over the world can look up terms and understand what they mean. We had a fruitful discussion about the project and some hands-on tries on the software. I shared some of the experiences we had at Registrar Trek with working multilingual. Again, this project is highly dependent on people just taking a heart and start adding terms and providing translations, so here I want to encourage you, the reader, to create a user account and start filling the “Encyclopaedia” with content!

Marzia Loddo and I at the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia "Leonardo da Vinci"
Marzia Loddo and I at the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia “Leonardo da Vinci”
Maybe what I will remember most about the trip to Milan is the people I met and the conversations I had. And again, the topics of documentation played a role. When you are meeting with an art historian like Rupert Shepherd at the “Porta Nuova” in Milan you might learn that for a renaissance researcher this place is somewhere else than for the common tourist collections manager. Yes, terminology is important but we managed to find each other and fellow documentalist Susanne Nickel to enjoy a good Italian dinner together! Of course, there’s nothing better than swapping documentation horror stories with fellow documentalists and I did so with many colleagues I had never met so far or knew only via the internet – and with people I haven’t seen for quite a while. It’s funny that you might work next town for years but you need to go to Italy to see each other and have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine together. And I learned that nothing stops a Registrar Trekker! Marzia Loddo, one of our Italian translators, and I managed to meet each other although a couple of incidents including a broken washing machine tried to hinder us!

It was great fun, thank you Milan and maybe we meet each other while working on the “Encyclopaedia”?

Best wishes
Angela

This post is also available in Polish, translated by Marcin Mondzelewski, the translation originally appeared on the blog of the Polish Museum Registrar Association http://inwentaryzatorzy.blogspot.de/.

  1. You might like to take a look at the hashtag #CIDOC2016 on twitter to find what people found noteworthy while attending the conference. ↩

Registrar Trek goes Milano!

Dear Registrar Trekkers,

I’m all excited that I will present a short paper together with Rupert Shepherd from the National Gallery in London at the CIDOC Conference in Milano. It is called ”Spreading the word: Explaining what Museum Documentation is and why it’s important“. We are part of the ”Introduction to Documentation Standards“ session that is scheduled for the 4th of July, 4 to 6 p.m.

photo by hikersbay via pixabay
Duomo di Santa Maria Nascente (photo by hikersbay via pixabay)

At the moment we are finetuning our talk which will be about the importance of initiatives like the hashtag #MuseumDocumentation, this very blog and all other projects who aim to make documentation and collections management more visible for the public and decision makers.

As the CIDOC conference is part of the big ICOM conference it will also be a great opportunity to meet colleagues I haven’t seen in years as well as meeting people I know so far only from the internet. I’m especially excited that I will meet our Italian translator Marzia Loddo in person. 🙂

And of course, I will write a short report on how it’s been when I’m back. Don’t forget to follow the hashtag #CIDOC2016 if you want to know what is going on.

See you in Milano!
Angela

This post is also available in Italian translated by Silvia Telmon.