 over to your host Susan Barker from the FAAIC. Go ahead Susan. Hi everyone. We're going to run through these. I'm so pleased to see as many people as there are. This is webinar number two in the Connecting to Collections course on Management 101 and I want to remind you as I said last week the ground rules are you had to have been here last week and you have to attend live, excuse me, all four of the webinars so that the people that are viewing in multiples, you know, we have other people in the room, I'm going to ask you who is there like I did last weekend if you can send me the emails of those people. I'd appreciate it. And so we'll start. If you're looking for information on caring for collections for small and mid-sized museums, we have a lot of resources for you. There's the discussion forum that you do need to register for but it doesn't cost anything. There are more than a thousand resources on the resources link and all the past webinars are available in the archives and some of them have closed captioning and if they have a closed caption option there's a note on the webinar page with a link to the FAIC YouTube videos. And we're on Facebook, we're on Twitter. If you want to be on the CCCC Announce List just get this web address and it'll give you the instructions. And you can contact me anytime. This is my email address and next week we have there's a forum for that with Babsutli and the following week the last of this program we have a place for everything and everything in its place collections inventory and that will be the end of the sessions. Today we have Angela Kipp and I'm very very pleased about that. She is the registrar at the Technosian in Mannheim, Germany and she's also the author of the multi-lingual registrar trek blog which is just fabulous. I really suggest subscribing to it and we're really pleased to have her here. She said she likes to her favorite thing in life is to make life easier for her colleagues. So I'm going to turn it over to Angela and we'll start. Okay thank you Susan. I hope you all can hear me and I'm amazed to see the whole US in the chat window. Hello everybody and well I think I have to apologize in advance because I'm not a native speaker. So chances are I'm butchering your language and I hope you forgive me um so let's uh yes. Angela can I cut in for a minute? I just want to assure you all that if you have a question and you put it in the in the questions comments box I will grab it and make sure that Angela gets it. So she doesn't have to keep looking over there and we'll have questions in about an hour. Okay I'm I'm disappearing again. Okay thank you Susan. Yes and if I don't express myself clearly enough you can also put it in the questions comment section and Susan will grab it from there and I will try to revert this section in the questions sections. So what I'm trying to do over the next hour is to address the issue of collections that are for one reason or the other in a chaotic or neglected state and well unmanaged collections are very difficult and very different and to get an idea of what you are all up against I created a short poll that Susan will be showing and I will explain the options so you know what I mean with this poll. So tell me about your collection what describes the state it is in best is it totally unmanaged this is the case if you have no idea what is in that room upstairs and there is no documentation of any kind is it considerably unmanaged and this means there are signs of your predecessors having done something like sorting or cataloging but they didn't follow through and you don't see a red line or a strategy behind it when it's partly unmanaged then there are parts of your collection that are in great shape but there is a huge pile of backlog where nothing or next to nothing has been done so far if it is neglected this means that your collection was once in good shape but hasn't seen collections care and management for some time so it's kind of chaotic with a good core but a lot of missing locations missing objects or wild acquisitions or the last option is never mind you are just here to hear a funny german accent or your collection is in good shape now but you want to recall the bad old times so this is the last options I think we let this poll open for the next two slides or so so that you can decide if you are still undecided what your collection is so my main focus will be the totally unmanaged collection but I will touch the other issues I will add as well sorry a little nervous so let's take a look at the shadow for this hour we will talk about the three golden rules with managing unmanaged collections we will look how we approach such a collection we will explain what logical exits are and why they matter we will talk about how we keep the process going we will talk about how you get help I will have a few last hints and then there should be enough time I should be ready in an hour or so that you can ask your questions as Susan told you you just write those questions right away in the chat box and Susan grabs it from there well the good thing is that whatever state your collection is in there's always something you can do about it and all has to do with the following three golden rules the first one is to be forgiving to your past self don't get me wrong we all have those moments when we look with sheer terror at something our predecessors did closest stuffed in acidic cardboard boxes numbers written in nail polish all across the artifacts and I can remember someone in a webinar chat reporting that the ordering concept he or she found in the collection was that the boxes were ordered by color yes there is a time for a hefty curse it is important to curse once in a while but keep in mind that your predecessors didn't have the possibilities you have 20 years ago professional development in our field was much more difficult than it is today today if you don't know how to care best for your artifacts you enter a search term in a search engine and chances are that you find a whole range of good information for example from collecting to collections care of course or the conservograms of the nps or the uk based collections trust or you can ask in a forum or a mailing list like the rcim listserv and all the good information is just one mouse click away informer days it wasn't that simple we were limited to the literature you could get a hold on and you had to know what book about something exists not to forget that research in collections care has come a long way and your predecessors might not have had any training in it that's one reason why you shouldn't be too hard on your past self and i will tell you another reason it's that you yourself been inevitably make mistakes while working on your collection i hope you don't make dumb mistakes but maybe sophisticated mistakes funny mistakes or other mistakes so in a way be your present self is your future past self if you know what i mean so being forgiven to your past self is part of the next rule and this is the rule take good care of your present self this is made it the most important thing when you work with your collection it's you the healthy collections measure that can do something for the collection to improve it make sense of it and care for it but the single most important thing is that you have to care for yourself in the first place every collection holds a certain amount of hazards some might be very obvious like sharp edges on some farming machinery and it goes without saying that if your collection shows signs of mold you shouldn't go in there without personal protection equipment but most hazards don't show their viciousness so open let me give you three examples of these more hidden dangers the first ones i like to call the silent killers because unlike some well known chemicals you can't smell them and therefore you don't notice that they are there this goes for chemical substances that were used to treat your artifacts like for example arsenic was used to treat taxidermy specimens against pests it can also be quite harmless looking objects like this beautiful drinking cup that has a strong radium source in it and it can be a common medical instrument that contains an open mercury source as you might guess from these pictures this is not theory or because it's fancy to talk about collections hazards it's very very real the first one okay this is not from our collection this is from my private collections of crappy taxidermies from german restaurants but the other two are from our collection at the Tate Museum and this is really a drinking cup where people were drinking radioactive fluid because they thought it was healthy and the the third one is a blood pressure meter that contains mercury and this is a very good example that you never should assume that your collection is safe it's some instruments and artifacts contain really open mercury sources to functions these are blood pressure meters or certain kinds of parameters they need the mercury exposed to the open air and it goes without saying that the warper is going in the air and but I was convinced that we didn't have open mercury sources I was convinced that we only had thermometers and maybe some mercury switches but all well contained and when we did a test on our air in the storage area we suddenly discovered no there was mercury in the air and it was because of such instruments and well the important thing is never assume never assume that your collection is without hazardous materials really assume it's the opposite case you should always look for hazardous materials and like I said I was really surprised by this and this is to say that your only and most important protective equipment this is your knowledge you have to research what your artifacts contain and make sure that they are not silently killing yourself well there are other hazards and the next I want to call the natural enemies you will assume that your working place is the collection and you work there and everything is fine but other creatures might might see them as their home and this also holds a certain danger most of this residence in your collection area are more likely to prefer flight instead of fight but when they feel you threat their lives they will possibly act aggressively if you're in the south of the US you might recognize this spider up there it's a brown recluse spider and if you move some boxes and this creature feels threatened they might bite you and this is really dangerous and it's also goes for rats and mice they might have their home under one of your farming equipment and suddenly try to bite you and of course all these rodents can also infest you with diseases so you should always be aware that there are enemies inside and you should always wear suitable clothes and be careful when you remove things that were stored for a longer period of times and another danger that you might not really be aware of is yourself believe it or not you're maybe your biggest enemy when you're working with an unmanaged collection it's you who take an unnecessary risk by working in an environment that contains undiscovered hazards without proper safety equipment it's you who forgets to take a proper lunch break and spend some time in a clean room eat healthy and drink enough water it's you who works more hours than stated in your working contract without anybody pushing to do so it's you who neglects family and friends because you have to do this and that for your collection so be aware that you are the biggest threat to your own physical and mental health and try to establish a good working life balance only if you are healthy and calm you can probably care for your collection which leads us to the third golden rule which is to be kind to your future self you should consider that you might find it difficult to be forgiving with your past self because your past self not only did certain things but you left you clueless why he or she did certain things if only you knew why they decided to change the numbering systems if only you knew why you have a random collection of artworks that are not from a local artist if only you know who brought in this object the documentation is key and it goes far beyond cataloging of these objects so if you forget everything I tell you tonight I want you to keep one thing and this one thing is before you do anything with your collection get a diary for your project it might be a paper notebook or a word document this doesn't matter but start the diary before you do anything else with your collection then make it a routine that at the end of the day you take down a few notes of what you did and why you decided to do it this doesn't need to be a novel it's something simple your entry when you are decided on numbering locations might sound like this named locations after the following principles rows of shelving units get a letter and a number first shelving unit on the left hand side gets an a numbers run from door to window so first shelving unit is a one next a two and so on this will also be useful for issues you spotted like for example I discovered a large crack under the window on the far left side in room two this needs maintenance or unusual occurrences that might not mean anything but if they do you should have noted you first noticed it for example this one I found a door to the collections room unlocked your diary will help your present sorry your diary will help your your I think I skip this sentence because I totally mingled it up and this and what I wanted to say is that this helps your present self to keep on track and your future self will find it easier to understand what you said and what you decided to do and this will on and on help you making your work and the collection more effective because no time is wasted on finding out why something was done or when something was discovered and so on and it might avoid making the same mistake twice so let's have a look with the three golden rules in mind on how to approach the collection here it's most important to do this in a structured way and you might want to keep in mind that the best way to approach a collection the first time is a hands-off approach so you don't get in there starting to clean up sort and catalog so the first thing and most important step is that you get the whole picture you will carefully assess what issues there are and what objects you have to deal with the better your assessment the better you are able to lay out strategies strategies for managing this mess well I know this is a change in mindsets from what you what you usually learn when you are studying conservation or museum studies you usually learn to focus on what's best for a single artifact but confronted with an unmanaged collection your situation is very very different I want you to think of a first strip spawner at a major railway accident or a surgeon on a battlefield you can't just take care of the first injured person you see you have to get an overview and make sure you help as many people as possible by organizing effective help in emergency response this is called a triage at an accident side you would have to decide who gets medical treatment first and who can wait with an unmanaged collection you have to decide which causes of action are the most urgent to take and which can wait longer in the case where the collection is not already stored in a museum or where the storage room is not up to the high standards of a museum storage your first assessment might actually have nothing to do with the collection you will have to assess the room and the building and I want you to keep in mind that when you are thinking about object security the first level of security is always provided by the building so a lot of the issues with the collection are actually building issues there is a broad range of issues so I take one as an example and this is the classic the leaking roof it is obvious that the leaking roof isn't a good thing for a storage room and if you have high humidity and water puddles on the floor and pests and mold thriving it's probably doesn't make much sense if you start cataloging and rehousing your objects so a leaking roof is definitely something to take care of but how high it will be on the priority list depends on the circumstances and other issues as I said it's important to get a whole picture and the leaking roof might only be a small fraction of it most obvious if there are electrified wires somewhere in this room you shouldn't come close to the waters in the first place this is goes without saying you first have to make sure that this isn't the case or if it is the case that electricity for this room is shot off your leaking roof might not be your top priority that you should look for other issues and especially look if this room where you see the where you see that there's water inside that this is switched off from electricity but also to look for other hazards that might be lethal like life ammunition or something but there is the case where the leaking roof is the biggest issue but to fix it might still not be your top priority if half of the roof is missing this is a top priority and actually you might consider moving the whole collection as a first aid measure if there's a big hole and it's a rain season you definitely have a top priority too but depending on the circumstances you might do with ever with evacuating parts of the collection and then immersion emergency do-it-yourself repair to take steps towards a professional repair later a minor hole that doesn't affect this is collection storage area directly can even wait longer so let's make the list of this first approach complete your first steps as I said are always hands-off approaches and it's crucial that you take enough photo of the situation as it is later in the process you might often wonder how something looked in the original state so the documentation in photos will be something you will go back to frequently those photos are especially important as you might destroy connections between artifacts once you start to sort them your photos will help to re establish those connections and let's not forget that in times where you feel down looking at these photos of the mess your collection was when you started to work can be very very encouraging I hope I made it clear that it is crucial that you spit spot all the issues before you begin to work we talked about the health hazards but there might be more issues for example ownership of the collection is unclear lack of storage room and storage furniture lack of material to work with decaying objects you might end up with a very very long list of issues with this collection at this stage it is important that you list all issues no matter how big or small they seem to you you want to get the whole picture so just make sure you spot and name all the issues then when you have spotted all the issues it's time to prioritize as in the example of the leaking roof not all issues can be the same priority and you have to decide what to do first second and third also choose your battles wisely to give you an example if you have more in your collection it is crucial to find out where the mode comes from and take the right steps in the right sequence it doesn't make sense to start cataloging the moldy objects especially not without proper safety equipment at this point it makes no sense as you will most likely not be able to decide if an object is damaged beyond repair so you are probably wasting your time when you catalog it if the reason for the mold is the storage room itself because it has a too high humidity and too low air exchange it doesn't make sense to hire a conservator to treat the objects for the mold and then bring them back into the same lousy storage area in the case of mood you first have to find either a way to remove the reason for the mold or you have to find a better storage area once you have that you can find a conservator to advise on treatment and look for ways to fund fund this treatment only when you have done this it makes sense to catalog the collection this is an example of parts of the plan you will have to lay out to tackle the collection step by step and this is what you will have to do once you have spotted all the issues let me show you why this is the next important step I want you to imagine the following I want you to imagine that your unmanaged collection is for a moment Antarctica and what you want to reach is the pole the south pole of best practice and for those of you who answered in the poll that they have a partly managed collections this what I draw here will sound a little familiar because you always find signs that someone has started to do something but they didn't follow through so someone has started to sort the collection someone has started to catalog the collection someone has written a collections policy but none of them followed to the pole of best practice what have if they had a better plan what if they had decided what to do second third and next well let's try this and we see that if these approaches would have been planned approaches that build upon each other they would have managed to make the path more than halfway to the pole although none of them individually has come farther than in the other approaches they made it really halfway to the pole if you look closely you see that the one who started this expedition is actually the one who have written the collections policy this might seem counter-intuitive at first because shouldn't we first look at our objects and what they are and what makes this collection outstanding compared to others before we state what we collect well let me tell you that I've seen quite a lot of partly managed collections and neglected collections and the issue that unified them was this someone had accessioned a lot of object that didn't fit into the institution's mission and shouldn't have been acquired in the first place those collections took up valuable storage space and clocked the database without being of any use they had to invest a lot of effort to get rid of them if they had had a collections policy to guide them in the accessioning process they would have probably not ended up in such a state that's why having a collections policy is really crucial think of it as your guiding compass when you start sorting and collecting and you have a collections policy it gets a lot easier to sort out the things that don't support your admission you don't waste your precious time on objects that won't end up in your final collection anyway you might say that you are not in the position to formally put a collections policy in place in your institution if that's the case make one anyway based on the mission of your institution and your assessment of the situation as is it can be a pretty simple one like this we only collect farming equipment that was either built or used in our area we don't collect archival material as we don't have the space and the climate to properly care for it so those items go to the town archives same with textiles of any kind those go to the textile museum next town I think you can imagine that on this basis your decisions become a lot easier and with written collections policy beforehand it is much much easier to let go of this beautiful wedding gown you found underneath one of your blouse so next up we're going to talk about logical exits you might remember our map from Antarctica and how our predecessors were not able to reach the pole of best practice it's one of the truisms of our jobs that carrying for the collection is just one of the many hats we wear so even a full-time collections manager in a large museum isn't able to stick with one task all the time not a museum professional in a small museum but as we all know too well if we stop in the middle of a task and come back to it later it takes a lot of time to figure out where we left off indeed if we had to let go of a task for too long taking it up again is nearly like starting all over to avoid this loss of time and energy we define logical exits well think of them as depots along the way where you can safely rest for some time and continue your path later early in the process the logical exits are very similar to all unmanaged collections but when you are making progress you will have to define logical exits that are crafted to your collection in my book I have defined four logical exits that can be adapted to most collections those also give you an idea of the steps to take towards managing and unmanaged collections and that's the cheap trick I use to get all this information across in the limited time we have so let's take a look at the first logical exit it's that's the steps we take early in the process that process that are crucial that we get this project started you have you have spotted all the issues and now it's time to compile all basic information that is all the important information about the building and its surroundings including things like where's the next toilet is there a washing room in the vicinity what tools and materials are there how wide are the aisles what are the dimensions of the rooms the collection is stored in you get it all the important things you will need to know later in the process then what you should have is all relevant information in the places you most likely need them again this is perhaps easier if I make an example the heating manual and the telephone number of the service technician is in the heating room and of course you have all the important phone numbers in your address book and of course if you work with others they should also know where the important information can be found what you should collect from the start is all the things you need to know to effectively manage a collection in the handout you will find a bio sorry you'll find a list of books and information you should have access to but these are more general hints your library should contain books PDFs and links to resources that are relevant for your collection and this will defer a lot depending on the artifacts you take care of it might be old mail order catalogs for a farming collection and it might be a list of pesticides for a textile collection let's come back to your issues you will compile two lists or the priority one list will show all the tasks that need to be done and you can do without help the other one will contain all the tasks you will need help with this can be as simple as a second pair of eyes or helping hand to do it it can be a craftsman you need to fix something or a decision you need from your board as you see this range from can be range from very simple to very complex I take again our example of the leaking roof it can be as simple as you need a couple of dollars for some tar paper or as complex as you need a decision from the board that the roof has to be fixed that you need to find money so you have the resources to fix it and then you need to find a loser who can do it don't let this scare you at the moment it is just important that you have identified all the things you need help with and tackling them comes later your next list is a list of materials you will need to start working this might be simple things like a desk and a chair but also things like a vacuum cleaner and archival packaging don't forget to note all the necessary protective equipment what you should collect is all legal documents concerning your collection these are things like deeds of gifts letters of intentions wills all kinds of correspondences that have to do with the collection everything that helps you to determine if the objects you find actually belong to your institution in a collection with various donors and unclear legal status this might be work in progress but it's important to have all the information you already found in one place we already talked about the collections policy at the first logical exit you should have at least one in draft form and of course you have your faithful diary of decisions and occurrences that was a lot of stuff I know but it's getting better let's look at the steps towards the second logical exit to effectively manage your collection you must be able to say where everything is this goes of course for your objects but also for materials and issues our language is bound to cause confusion and misunderstandings and quite a few people and myself included confuse left with right and only few people know exactly where north and south is on their grounds if you say there's a large crack under the lower left corner of the left window in the southeast room upstairs it is likely to cause confusion even if this direction is pretty exact there's a consistent numbering system that is clearly communicated to everyone working there it gets much easier I prefer to give each room a number and then divide rooms by the chessboard method so you have a grid over the room where you can identify the location by a letter and a number this will help you start working when you are setting up shelves those will also get a consistent numbering system now you can say the crack is under the lower left corner of the window in a for in room two this should be easier to find at the second logical exit you will have installed and communicated a location marking system throughout your whole building so you can name the location of every object you find at the beginning you will likely find chaos of things that do or do not belong to the collection let's go back to this slide you will throw everything out of the collections room that doesn't belong there such as cleaning equipment or chairs for events or whatever clutter you find collection areas should belong to the collection and nothing else at the second logical exit there will be a collection storage room a place where you can you are working with the collection that should if possible not be the same room a place where the tools and materials are stored and the place where you can eat and take a break which definitely can't be in the same room as the collection and the place to put the trash in you will also secure the place in a way that it makes it safe to work in this means that you fix the biggest issues with the collection storage space at least in a rough and ready way for example there are buckets under the leak in the roof or you fix the roof with tar paper at the second logical exit you have removed all the hazards you could and have protective equipment suitable to work therefore the hazards you couldn't remove what you should have done at the second logical exit is organized controlled exits access to the storage area or at least have a plan on how to control access in the future you want to manage this collection and bring it to a best practice stage this is only possible if you have an idea of what happens in your storage area this will be a long and ongoing fight but the early in the process you move towards it the better and talking from experience as long as the place is a mess it's much much easier to enforce controlled access then later when the space is a tidy neat place that's holds interesting things communication is always key so it's I would recommend that you have explained the new organization to the people you work with it's preferable to give upper management a guided tour to explain what you did and why it's both about explaining why certain things are important and what needs to be done as well as it is a bit of showing off what you already achieved you should never underestimate how important it is to communicate what you do to upper management they are far from the actual work and they are important when it comes to money so you shouldn't miss any chance for when you can point them to the most burning issues as well as proving them that growth progress has been made let's now come to the third logical exit which doesn't take much time to tell you what it is but it will be a long working step behind it it's now the time to sort your collection into logical categories depending on what you have you might sort by topic or category that's for example use separated tools for the field work from the tools used at the workshop and the utilities used in the kitchen or you can sort by material for example you separate the photographs and archival material and the textiles and the metal items and the wood items you get it or you can even sort in a certain time span when the things were created or used you can for example sort the tools were used before electricity came to town and the time afterward most likely all of the potential sorting categories will play a role but most of the time one is more important than the other that's the most important thing is that you define these categories which should be easy if you have a collections policy and then sort it through from yeah A to Z at the third logical exit you will have sorted the collection into logical categories and documented how you have decided on the categorization and why now you are in the position to actually start cataloging the collections and we're done with the third logical exit to come up with the fourth logical exit this is here you are designing a set of strategies to work with the collection the first is a documentation strategy although i'm convinced that we all love complete documentation with a totally unmanaged collection you might be willing to set priorities a complete documentation is time consuming and this might not be feasible depending on your circumstances to give you an example if you have to move all the objects from the current storage to a better one within one year you will probably just assign a number to each artifact choose a fitting name for it take a photo and the measurement and then go on packing it for the move no time for detailed research on building dates and purposes and your photo must serve as a condition report however the more detailed cataloging is that this more detailed cataloging as we know it as a complete documentation is of course shadowed in your documentation strategy for the time after the move the second strategy is a collections cares strategy while sorting you will have discovered a whole bunch of issues that you need to take care of some objects need to be cleaned most will need to be rehoused some might need a special mound and some might need to see a conservator in a collections care strategy you will lay out what needs to be done and when it needs to be done this strategy can contain tasks for all the objects an example would be rehousing in archival materials it can contain tasks for a distinct object group an example would be that all textiles have to be sent to a conservation lab for moth treatment or it can go down to individual objects an example would be a special grade that needs to be built for storing a motorcycle once you have both strategy you have to interlink them in a logical way at a moment these are two strategies that have nothing to do with one another and this means you don't have an effective workflow if you just follow your documentation strategy you will take a photo of the object measure it and give it a new location but you have taken a photo of a dusty object and the object isn't rehoused if you just follow your collections care strategy you will clean the object and we house it and then you have to unpack it again for photographing and measuring it so make sure your documentation and care steps are in a logical sequence this is how it could look like you will first make sure that the object becomes identifiable for all the next steps which means you give it a number and measure it then you clean it so it's tidy for the photo shooting then you take a photo then you will house it pack it safely for the transport move it and after the move unpack it do a complete condition reporting complete the catalog entry and store it for eternity mind me this is just an interlinked strategy for collections move your interlinked strategy might look a lot different perhaps as you were sorting and designing your strategies you run into some areas of the collections that seem well contained and comparably easy to catalog such as a collection of common kitchen equipment while it might be compelling to start with those parts of the collection it might be wise or to leave them for some time you have an intern or volunteer because what needs to be done is easy to explain and it doesn't need much specialized knowledge it's probably better that you the expert on this collection and the project manager takes care of the more complicated tasks and objects you might discover might also discover parts of the collection that need the specialists there are those objects you don't have to faintest ideas of what faintest idea of what they are instead of wasting your time on finding out what they are it might be smarter to put them aside until you stumble upon someone who can help you with identifying and probably properly properly it is called properly yeah you realize i'm german and what i wanted to say is you wait for someone he's who is an expert in this area and then he can tell you how to proper catalog this this object and again i want to show you that this is not a theory i want to show you this last year the technosium has taken over a collection of about 7 000 historical objects from the state broadcasting station while we have radio experts on stuff there is a whole lot of equipment for which we will need specialists to help you help us with identification because as you can probably tell oh i say this is probably the wrong one sorry for that sorry for that i wanted to show you this okay we have taken over this collection of broadcasting equipment and as you can tell by my puzzled luck look i have no idea what this is and it will take much much time to identify it but we have already found some retired staff members of the broadcasting uh story so a station who already offered us to volunteer with identifying these pieces and once we have an overview of what we unloaded and what we got we will bring them in to help us proper properly catalog this collection so now we come to the fifth logical exit and this means it's your turn those first four logical exits were pretty generic they fit most collections although you might have to adapt them for your special needs from now on you will have to design your own logical exits they are very individual for your collection but the main thing is to look at what you want to achieve and what your restrictions are in terms of timers and money to show you the way i will take again this example of moving your collection under a certain deadline these would be possibly next logical exits the fifth might be to have a complete photographic overview of the current storage situation you might have a rough collections move strategy and you will have done some estimations on storage needs based on the overview of the collection but so far without detailed data your sixth logical exit might be to have all objects numbered named and measured your seventh logical exit might be to have a detailed collections move plan including a logistic concept a list of needed packing materials and an estimate of needed stuff diversified by the skills for example you need a project manager and two art handlers and a chipper and so on your eighth logical exit might have might be to have a the move completed and all the location changes documented your ninth logical exit might be that every object has a proper and detailed catalog entry of course if of course i'm well aware of the irony that if you have to move the collection under time pressure you probably don't have time to leave the collection unattended after reaching one of those exits so as you have seen those logical exits already contain major tasks so they are not something that can be reached within days that's why it's important to define smaller goals along the way to the next logical exit those are resting stops where you can pat yourself on the shoulder and then proceed towards the larger goal it's also important to keep this in mind you always need to have a plan b and c if your plans don't work out a lot of your work will not go as planned and you will have to adapt quite a few of your plans and strategies as you are making processes on your unmanaged collection actually i like the quote this is attributed to try the eisenhower that plants are worthless but planning is everything the good thing about an unmanaged collection is that you always have something to do while you are waiting for getting money granted to buy archival materials you can already sort your collection while you are waiting for an answer to your grant application you can certainly fix some of the building issues with neighborhood help while you can't access the collection because you discovered more than you don't have sufficient safety equipment you can read books on the topic of your collection and research for the right database software the important thing is always keep moving because if you are not doing something to improve the collection no one else will so is there anybody out there to help you are you alone in this world well even if you are the only museum professional within the next thousand miles you are not alone first up there are a lot of professional resources to help you like the connecting to collections care online community the registers committee of the American Alliance of Museum have a great listserv they're very helpful and knowledgeable people are who will try to help you solve your problems there is the museum junction of the American Alliance of museums then don't forget that there are your regional museum associations and there are most likely museums and institutions with a similar scope of collections to reach out to and ask for advice although there were major cuts in the well-known grant programs in the last few years there are still a lot of grant opportunities asking museum association and fellow museum professionals sometimes it's not the great programs that are well known but more regional donors who want to do something for the collection so keep your ears open and well talk to a lot of people and you might discover things you haven't thought of so far and never ever underestimate the power of your neighborhood your collection most likely has some meaning to the community is this situated in if you have a task where you need a few strong arms you might find your local football team or your firefighters happy to help you might have people who are very experienced in raising money for a good cause and maybe they are willing to help you with the collection who knows maybe you can collaborate with your town's kill club or the Boy Scouts it's very important to be creative just talk to a lot of people in your neighborhood about your collections issues and you might discover solutions you hadn't thought about before so to close this webinar here a few hints that I think can keep you going the first one is to educate yourself like I said multiple times before knowledge about your collection is your first and most important safety equipment it's also something no one can take away from you and there's no such thing as useless or too much knowledge you never know when you will need what you have learned it costs next to nothing but may save a lot of time energy and money then never never ever be afraid to ask for help if you don't know what to do or if you are not certain what is best for your collection reach out to colleagues you might know there are no dumb questions only dumb answers take care of yourself and everybody who is working with you you might not be the boss of your institution you are working in but when it comes to the collection you take care of you are in an idealistic sense the boss you know the hazards and dangers you know how to work effectively with the collection so it's part of your job to take care for whoever works with you on this collection to warn them about dangerous substances to remind them to wear their safety equipment or simply remind them that they should take a break and drink some water then document everything whatever you do make sure your actions are well documented and future colleagues can understand what you did and why if your contract ends make sure all your papers and files are in the right place so your success can find them easily this is not only about acting professional and being kind to your future self it's also about paying respect for your own work and achievements and the first two pieces of advice i want to remind you that they have a flip side while you are making progress with your collection you gain a unique set of knowledge skills and experiences and this means you are probably becoming the experts in let's say coffee makers in South Dakota or something and so you will inevitably become an expert in something and if you find a colleague struggling with issues you have already resolved lend a helping hand to him or her our field can only progress as a whole if we help each other by sharing our knowledge and well this was it for me and i'm giving back to susan because i'm rather true there are some questions okay i'm back um there were many people who said uh not to worry you you do this in uh english very well and my cat is very pleased that you included issues of his friends um okay um angola how did you test the air for mercury did you hire a company or were museum staff able to perform the test yes we hired the company we um actually we were more concerned about asbestos um but uh because we had a mercury incident where some mercury was spilled 10 years ago we already said they should test for mercury but this is nothing you can do yourself or i have to be more specific there are testing uh methods on mercury that you can perform yourself or your local firefighters but these are measures that are conducted for um heavy mercury incidents where a lot of mercury is built um but what we had here was a very fine concentration on um of mercury vapor in the air and this is something you can't test yourself your this testing methods you can that your local firefighters can do or you to can do yourself um they are for really really high concentrations and we had to test for very low concentrations they were over the um uh how to tell that this acceptable normal but uh but not so high for an acute mercury incident okay um i just want to point out that in the handouts below um you can download a an ad for angola's book and it has a discount code so please feel free to use it um and i just put up the evaluation link the evaluations are really important so um please fill it out um and questions are coming in too fast for me to get but i'll go back to the old questions um all right um do you how do you deal with dust from a wood stove or mold there were a lot of questions about mold so i and i can say there there is a past webinar on mold that you might look up i will um house past webinars that are related to this one that might help but angola how do you deal with mom well um as i said the first and most important thing is to decide where it comes from um personally i would never do anything on my own um without consulting with a conservator in the case of mold because there are a whole range of mold um different kinds of mold and um i don't rely on my own knowledge to decide what it is so i will always try to get a fellow conservator to have a look or to send in pictures or anything the the first and most important thing is to uh take pictures and get out and don't go in there without at least having a good mask but uh there are different kinds of uh mold so sometimes the spores are uh not suitable for the mask i have and need a special um treatment that's why i'm always consulting with a conservator and the other thing about mold is that um treating the object is uh is just one thing the first thing is to have to discover where it comes from so look if there is uh something wrong with the havoc if you have one or is there um a leak in the roof like i said or a leak in the water pipe is there water somewhere or where does the mold come from is the first thing to look for and then remove the cause and then treat the the artifact okay there's a another question that came in about um can a standalone economic dehumidifier rid the musky mildew smell in a room about 600 square feet or should i document or should i do a document cleaning in addition i'd say probably you need to document clean but what do you think well um it's always hard to uh if you haven't seen the situation itself uh dehumidifier can be the right thing to do but it always also can be the one thing to do um you can some dehumidifiers for commercial use they bring down the climate to dry the climate too much so you get other damages because of this and so i would never say use a dehumidifier if i haven't seen this situation i would document and consult with a conservator and then decide if the dehumidifier is the way to go or if it's something else okay on there are actually quite a few questions about hazardous materials and i think that you've covered uh that it's if you have hazardous materials it's good to get someone from the outside or a our health sciences person to evaluate so mold radioactive materials mercury all those things um and so let me see there was also a big discussion about um numbering and found in collections materials and drop-offs donations and orphan materials some of them will be covered in the inventory webinar that's coming up do you have anything to add to that um concerning yeah the drop of donations yes it's it's always a problem it's why i put this emphasis on the collections policy because um as as soon as people realize there's someone caring for this collection they will inevitably try to donate something to the collection it's it's always that way and this is important to have a collections policy and say look we don't collect this and that because of um concerning the drop of donations there is uh perhaps not much you can do uh than uh educating your front house stuff that they shouldn't uh shouldn't accept such a thing but if they drop it at the front of your museum door there's not much you can do um but um anecdotally um there is a very good way that the ddr museum ddr museum in berlin managed um it and i like the idea so i tell you um they state on their home page that they can't accept unsolided donations and um so if you want to give something to the museum you have first have to contact the museum and then you get a code word and only if you tell this code word to the front house stuff they can accept whatever you bring and uh this is a way that i they have installed this recently and i don't have any data if it really works well but i found this is a great way to relieve front house stuff because they can say do you have the code word if someone brings it and uh if they say oh uh code word no i don't know they can send it back and say um okay first contact the curator for the code word and then you can come back with it oh i really like that me too i'm i'm very very excited and i hope it works well because if it does it will be a role model for all of us because i guess we are all struggling with this drop-off donations okay um i'm sort of looking at these questions because they're some of them are in random order but along with there was a large side discussion about all numbering systems and renumbering and does that come under one of your exits um or is it something that we can forget about for until you've gone through several other steps um well does the thing with um should we keep the old numbers the new numbers and so on i always recommend to be very very careful and uh lean to the side of not renumber anything because um many of the issues i saw are actually that people said okay the old numbering system is is totally crap and we invent a new one and we want the three patriot number system and as much as i like our normal system i often see that it causes confusion because there are up to three numbers on one artifact so uh at least in the first attempt of an unmanaged collection i would highly recommend to uh not renumber anything but um just stay with this uh maybe illogical numbering system that is in place and later decide if it does make sense to renumber but in the first place you will most likely create more confusion with with a new numbering system than with the old one yes um i i really like this uh laura hemer from malvern pennsylvania said they're planning to put on their website uh something about how people should donate to the collection and what they collect i think that helps a lot um right i know one museum where the director would sit outside on the front porch and he had a picnic table outside and he'd tell people to put their junk there it's horrifying yeah um we have a question i'm the only staff person so getting the board to understand the importance of following policies is really hard i've walked in and just handed new objects i i i have them walk in and they hand me new objects without a clue of how it was obtained and um so and there were some other questions about how do you get the board on on board because a lot of times board members really don't understand uh what are museum problems or and they're only interested in the stuff in the front of the museum they don't understand understand the stuff in the back oh yes that's a common problem i think educating upper management is probably um one of the most difficult tasks you have to go through with every collection and especially with the unmanaged collection and um i think it was brand paul in the last webinar in august who said that you need patience and persistence and uh there is much truth to that so um this is uh something you will continuously need to educate them what it is and um this is why i recommended that when you first uh brought a little bit of order into your chaos that you give your board um guide a tour to your collection area so that you can explain things firsthand and um what might help a little against this problem that they just keep um acquiring new things and give you new things and new things and new things might be explain what uh how the storage space translates into money so to explain every square meter of this storage area um costs us this and that in heating costs costs us this and that in rent if you rented place and for for some of them you always have to keep in mind that board members and upper management often are not from the museum field they don't really understand what you are up up to but there's one language they always understand and this is money so translating to them what the care of the collection with your working time and the time you need to to catalog and to find things and so on and to heat the room translates into money this might keep them from being so enthusiastic about collecting new things but um don't get me wrong um it's when when people see something shiny and they want to have it for their collections um they will bring it to you and the only thing you can do again is that you always like even if it's that boring to to you and to them you always say we have to look at does it support your our mission uh we will need new storage space this is expensive and so on right um i once did a cap for a museum and i recommended that they get an industrial cleanup and the board tore up my cap okay so um we just had a really good question and um what is your number one piece of advice for moving a currently manageable collection from one building to another so it doesn't become an unmanageable question the one single advice i have loads of advice for for this case and what the most important is probably that you have your location numbering system in place at the new building and hopefully you already have a good one in the old one um if you have any chance to do it i would try to have a barcoding or qr code system for the numbers because we moved our collection in 2006 from one offsite storage to another and we didn't have barcodes and i still discover 10 years latest things that never made it to the database just because of a switch of numbering and we introduced barcoding two years from now and since then i and this things getting misplaced because the number is type wrong is completely gone so if you have any chance to introduce parking coding before the move i will go for this and if you can't introduce barcoding for various reasons i would make sure that the new place has a good and consistent location numbering system and that you are tracking the location change right in the spot so not you are moving uh your objects and then you go through and look where they went every object check that comes out gets a new uh location as soon as it arrives at a new um storage area right um steve anderson in warhead city said what is really harsh is when the state attorney general walks through your front door and doesn't audit i know a whole museum i've known a whole museum being shut down because its board did not understand the legal implications of owning the collection wow um yes so um and there's some questions about barcoding you may have some tips about it i i think i may have a resource about barcoding and if i do i'll put it in the resources on the website but um what what do you have to suggest about barcoding well that's that's um no it's very easy but it's not that easy because it will depend if your database um is ready for barcoding um if they have modules for it um and it's also important what you want to um achieve with the barcoding we did a thorough research about half a year before we introduced our system of barcoding um because there are so many different options and many of the systems that go with qr code um are really complicated to put it into the software so we switched to very very simple um way of barcoding that we could implement ourselves in our database because our barcodes only um are the accession numbers so they work like uh normal as as if you typed in the accession number that's all our barcode does for in the one field and in the other field it just types in what the location is but i think barcoding would be um well it would be a session in its own i'd say um it's all the things you have to consider would be too complicated to now explain on the spot yeah um and there are several people who have said things like lacy from elgin south carolina says my collection has almost no unity regarding an object numbering system um yeah yes welcome to the club um is there a question associated with that no no there's just um and say do you have any advice on how to let uh how to sort items because sometimes the group of items that came in was placed in storage as a group and do you have any advice for for sorting that stuff uh with the risk of never linking to the accession records okay so i take it it's um you know all these pieces come from one donor or that's what i think it's saying okay okay um yes it's it always depends what might be important that if you know that these all came in at one time you should make sure that you don't lose this information by sorting so you should have a way of of marking them with uh with um labels or something so you don't lose the information it belongs to this donation in the process um but then um well it it really depends what it is um you can sort by by all yeah really it it's totally different if it's a um yeah works on paper and or if it's a farming equipment or kitchen equipment what you always need for sorting and maybe that's the biggest issue is that you need space um that's why i recommend to sort in waves which means that you take um say the first box and put it on a table and then sort into different categories and then condense it back to let's say three or five boxes then put the next box out and sort it so you always have a kind of a wave like way of sorting you make it broad sort condense it take the next one make it broad sort condense it little difficult to explain if i don't have a drawing tool or something okay um we have about five minutes left i see that devan horn from last week um said that the new edition of registrar registration methods for small museums is coming out in the spring and that there's a section on a letter or a numbering in that um and that should be really good that's a good book anyway that's great yeah yeah so um everyone has about the same kind of questions let me look here in my now messed up list in the parking you can also compile it um for afterwards and i take a look at it and try to write something about it if this is okay so if there are any trailing questions that didn't get answered we'll um do it but in writing i see one that i can easily answer that's the cat names it's uh beddy curly and bus bus is the tomcatch on the last slide right okay and um i i think we're about done aren't we you have any pearls of wisdom for the end um i will be posting the webinar in the next few days and with it will be the handouts and the powerpoint and any trailing questions for those of you who are looking to get the badge you have to be there for i mean that's the one rule that you have to attend live so i know i got a question about was it okay to not do that and i'm sorry if i if i change the rules for one person i have to change them for all and mike told me i was mean for saying that um and uh so and i will do the same thing i did last week for people that are watching um the uh webinar in groups i will ask you who is there and everything gets posted on the connecting to collections care website which is connecting to collections.org so um do you have anything else to say um well uh no it was great fun doing this and um next time i hope i will getting even better and i practice my english and uh thank you all for attending and like i wrote on the last slide it's always what i'm saying at conferences or whatever um made a road rise to meet you bye bye okay and your english there are very few of us who could have done this in um in german so i i don't worry so uh shoes okay um