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

Webinar

9/22/2016 2:00 PM–3:30 PM
Online
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Description

What would you do if faced with a dark, gloomy shack crammed with innumerable objects and you needed to bring it all to a best practice museum collections storage? At first, this might seem like an impossible task. The sheer amount of work, the variety of tasks that all seem to be top priority can be mind-boggling and daunting. Worse, what if you are the only museum professional within a few hundred miles and your budget is next to zero? How do you begin tackling problems like a leaking roof, the intense smell of mice and bats, dresses crammed in acidic boxes, and more objects deep down in the piles that might or might not contain hazardous material? Take a deep breath – this is not an impossible task. How do you begin?

This webinar will give you the pathway to tackle this type of situation. The focus is on the management for the overall project and not the care for single artifacts. It will help you to define what to do first, how to lay out and design a strategy, how to find help and, most importantly, how to take care of yourself during the process. We will also define “logical exits,” or points at which it is safe to stop working on a collection for a time without risking the progress and work you have done so far. Even if the situation of your collection is not as bad as the scenario described above, this webinar will provide you with ideas about how to proceed with a partly managed or neglected collection or how to integrate a large, chaotic collection into a well-managed existing one.

For more info: http://www.connectingtocollections.org/managing-unmanaged-collections/