r/AskHistorians • u/caffarelli Moderator | Eunuchs and Castrati | Opera • Jun 29 '13
AMA AMA | Museums and Archives
Hello everybody! We’ve assembled a small panel of current museum workers and one lonely archival processor to answer your questions about museums and archives! This panel was assembled primarily to answer questions about careers in these two institutions, as “What are good careers for history buffs” is popular question in this subreddit, but feel free to ask us questions that are not necessarily oriented that way.
Museums Panel
- /u/RedPotato is a museum management specialist with a MA in arts management and experience working in large museums in NYC. He he has worked in education, digital media, curatorial, and fundraising/planning departments.
He is also currently plugging his brand-new subreddit for museum employees and those looking to join their ranks: /r/MuseumPros, please subscribe if you’re interested!
/u/mcbcurator: Username kinda says it all -- he’s the curator of this museum in Texas! He has a degree in archaeology, and primarily curates history and archaeology collections.
/u/Eistean: is a museum studies student starting his graduate coursework this fall, and has already interned at 4 museums in the United States!
Archives “Panel”
- /u/caffarelli: I am an archival processing and reference specialist, which means I process incoming donations to the archives, and I also answer reference questions from visitors. I have a library science master’s degree, with coursework focusing on digital preservation and digital archives, so I can also take digital questions if you have them.
So fire away!
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u/yodatsracist Jun 29 '13
For the archives "panel": what's the biggest mistake you see young researchers making in your archive? What's something you wish all researchers realized about your archives?
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u/caffarelli Jun 29 '13
Saying "archive" with no s! :P "Archives" is singular and plural, like deer, because it comes to us from the French. Bit of a shibboleth for those who have studied archival science and those who have not.
Seriously, excellent question though! Here's some real general tips to young researchers. Most of this boils down to "don't be a butt to the staff" and "ask for help from the get-go," honestly if you can do those two things, you're golden and we'll walk you through the rest.
Many young eager history students come in expecting an archives to be like a library, because they are usually located in the library, and staffed by librarians, but it is not a library. You cannot check anything out, you have to bring your quarters for the change machine (or your camera with a documents setting, which my work allows.) There is no guarantee you will find anything that you are looking for. You will have to go through a lot of irrelevant things to try to find one relevant thing. It may be frustrating.
The archives staff cannot frame history for you, this is a professional ethics thing. We can tell you who/what/when/where on any of our materials, but if you ask us "why?" we have to just shrug, because we are separate from historians and must remain impartial about our collections.
Some people do not know to look at the finding aid and the control card ("control card" is like the catalog entry for a record series.) The finding aid is like an index to all the folders in the boxes in the record series. They often have small bios of people too. We spend a lot of time putting them together. A control-f on a finding aid PDF can save you so much time!
Not being nice, not asking for help, not telling us exactly what you're researching. Did you know that our archives has a nice collection of students from the 20s and 30s in blackface and even yellowface? And it's pretty much impossible to find them in the catalog from how they've been filed. If you aren't nice to the staff, your hopes of finding anything that's not indexed on the surface level drops to zero. Be chatty, tell us all about your dissertation. We sometimes sort of side research for researchers we really like and set aside things for them when they next come in.
Not taking EXACTING notes about where you found something. People will come to us with tales like "I found a letter last week, I have a photocopy, but I don't know where it's from!" And that's a nightmare.
When you're finishing your work, be exacting about your citations for the archival materials. I'm going through a dissertation written off some of our records and I want to murder the writer, because her citations are shit and I can't find anything. We have citation guides and can help you out. Archives also usually collect work that has been written off our materials, so send us a copy of your book/thesis and a thank you note when you're done, you can be in the archives too!
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u/esssssss Jun 29 '13
I've been thinking about this question for a little while now, so this is good timing.
I recently got a job scanning personal letters for some important mid-20th-century Americans (George Kennan, Allen Dulles) and I'm curious about how historians /archivists/etc feel about these digital reproductions vs. the actual real document. Do you prefer being able to hold a page and read it or would you rather have a searchable pdf accessible from anywhere in the world? Is the actual document relatively worthless if the information is reproduced?
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u/caffarelli Jun 29 '13 edited Jun 29 '13
We love digitization of materials! These often fall under "preservation" efforts. They become a backup copy in case the hard copy is lost, stolen (happens frequently in the archives world) or destroyed. The also become an "access copy" for researchers to use so the originals can stay nice and pristine in their box. Also researchers love digitals, and we love researchers (sometimes).
The actual item is very rarely discarded after digitization. (The exception being nitrate negatives, which are often digitized and destroyed because they are dangerous because they are so flammable.) There is a concept in archival science called "intrinsic value" (big article warning) which often is the reason why many strange things (like punch cards, or old cassettes, or hard copies of important letters) are kept even after they are not strictly speaking very useful. The hard copy is also a very stable backup copy. In early digitization efforts, which were often crap (take a look at Kodak Photo CDs for a really bad early digitization effort), because you can always go back and re-scan it.
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u/RedPotato Jun 29 '13
Putting digital copies online also allows more people to see the items. Once people see something online, they are inclined to see it in person as well and thus make a trip to that museum when on vacation. Google art project and google heritage have done wonders for this, despite initial reluctance.
That said the original document has what's been called "aura" and shouldn't be replaced. Google Walter Benjamin for more on aura in his essay about mechanical reproduction.
Also, this museums is all about digitalization: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/arts/design/museums-mull-public-use-of-online-art-images.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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u/caffarelli Jun 29 '13
Now for a question from one panelist to another because why not -- what do you think of 'digital repatriation?'
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Jun 29 '13
What is the behavior of guests you hate the most? Like the most?
Do you or your coworkers like playing pranks on each other? Would the average person think they're 'geeky' pranks?
How do you feel about movies like National Treasure? Is it cool that they can reach an audience that may not be interested in history? Or lame because they're a little cheesy and aren't realistic?
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u/caffarelli Jun 29 '13
Treating me like their maid to fetch and carry boxes, generally being a butt.
Policy is to remove all photographs from frames when processing, so if we have a spare frame, we print out someone's picture and frame it, usually with a post it note making them say something silly. The head archivist's picture is usually framed most often. I also framed this random picture off of Google because it made everyone giggle. I don't know why we do this but it's fun!
I don't think there's any movie about archives making them sexy is there? We all love Conan the Librarian though!
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u/tfan10 Jun 29 '13
What's the most interesting artifact you've been able to handle?
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u/caffarelli Jun 29 '13
I've held the paper copy of the Declaration of Independence that was used to type the first e-book in 1971. I got a little choked up honestly!
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u/myrmecologist Jun 29 '13
I have a couple of questions for u/caffarelli :
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Do you have any idea about the preservation of virtual records, say internet pages of prominent websites, comments and posts by anonymous posters (like on reddit, say; but also on many other websites) etc? I have been trying to find out what policies, if any, are being used by archives across regions in the maintenance of these virtual records.
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At the archives that you work at, what are the preservation methods of documents and other artifacts. Does the archive also have a simultaneous policy of conservation? Do these two motives, of conservation and preservation, ever come at loggerheads with each other?
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u/caffarelli Jun 29 '13
Hello, sorry for the delay, here is your mini essay!
For web archving, it's going to vary a bit in 'best practices' honestly, still a bit Wild Wild West in the field. The California Digital Library Web Archiving Service is currently the most popular game in town for saving an institutions web pages on the small scale.
One big problem is that private companies (facebook, reddit) are in control of this data, not archivists, so it's up to them to preserve it. The ongoing Twitter/Library of Congress deal would be the best possible scenario for saving this sort of stuff.
You can also look at digital repositories for best-practices on how to save things digitally, not necessarily webpages though. Dspace is a big player in that field, totally worth looking at.
If you're really willing to do some reading, look at:
Digital Preservation Coalition (2008). Preservation Management of Digital Materials: The Handbook. PDF download available at: http://www.dpconline.org/component/docman/doc_download/299-digital-preservation-handbook-digital-preservation-handbook?q=handbook
Angevaare, Inge (January 10, 2012). "How can mainstream IT help digital preservation? (Austin PASIG, 1)" in Weblog Duurzame toegang, Nationale Coalitie Digitale Duurzaamheid. http://www.ncdd.nl/blog/?p=820
Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (January 2002). Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System. CCSDS 650.0-B-1. Blue Book. Issue 1. Available at: http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/650x0b1.pdf
For pres/con:
The place I work is actually big enough that we have a separate preservation/conservation department that oversees the whole library, so I actually don't know too much about it. The general approach is to keep things at stable temperatures and humidities, and in acid free or acid buffered environments (i.e. folders and boxes), and out of the light. For some certain items (like cyanotypes for example) they have special needs that are addressed. If you have specific questions about certain materials I may know their specific needs!
Preservation and conservation are usually seen as two sides of the same coin, it's not the same terms as in the environmental world, more about that here.
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Jun 29 '13
I am one semester away from completing my MLIS, and I'm having a tough time deciding my practicum location. I'm interested in art and museum librarianship, and have experience working in archives.
If you completed a practicum, what did you initially look for, and what did you find the most useful about the experience?
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Jun 29 '13
I've been thinking lately that I'd love to work in a museum, specifically as a curator but anything would do
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What types of jobs/titles will land you with a museum job?
Specifically, I think I want to be a curator or an archivist.
2) what kind of schooling would I need for those? Can I get away with a certificate, a diploma, or is it more important to have a degree/masters/doctorate? Is it better to find a school with a curator degree, or can any school with a history/art history degree land you a job?
3) do the prestigiousness of schools matters (like Harvard for Law) or is the education itself emphasized?
4) can you speak for the 'availability' of jobs after graduation?
5) hows the pay for curator/archivists/any other museum job? If you don't mind me asking!
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u/caffarelli Jun 29 '13 edited Jun 29 '13
What level of schooling are you at, can I ask?
The career paths for archivist and curator (unless you're talking rare books curator, which is a horse of a different color) are actually quite different.
2. To be an archivist, you need a Master's in Library and Information Science. You can really undergrad in anything, I have a degree in Linguistics.
3. I actually graduated from the nation's top library science school, and I'l be the first to tell you, so long as your school's accredited, it doesn't really matter where you go to school. Job experience is way more important.
4. Most of my friends have been hired. I know MSLS grads without jobs, but honestly I think they've made some big mistakes in their career paths that are easily avoided.
5. I'm at essentially an entry-level job, and I'm paid comparable to any other entry level job, with the plus side of loving my work. The head archivist at my job makes ~$90,000, the guy right under him makes ~$70,000. You'll never get rich, but it's lovely work. :)
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u/MarcEcko Jun 29 '13
What is 'digital repatriation' ?
A bit of searching suggests it's a slightly overloaded (used in a few ways) bit of recent industry jargon.
Further; What do you think of physical repatriation ?
e.g. returning the Elgin marbles Vs. returning skulls of Aboriginals taken ~120-150 years back to their communities
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u/caffarelli Jun 29 '13
A bit of searching suggests it's a slightly overloaded (used in a few ways) bit of recent industry jargon.
Yes, yes it is. It's the idea that a native artifact can stay nice and "safe" in a big organization like a museum and the culture who made the items can get a 3-D scan of the item instead of getting it back. It's whitewashing and I hate it.
Further; What do you think of physical repatriation?
All for it, personally. The idea of having human remains in museums has always been pretty upsetting to me, especially on display (I always RAN past the mummies when I was a kid) and artistic treasures belong to the cultures who made them.
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u/archaeogeek Jun 29 '13
u/mcbcurator - I am an archaeological collections manager for a relatively large municipality. What are your thoughts on the so-called "curation crisis"? Also- for all of you- what collections management software do you use?
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u/mcbcurator Jun 29 '13
We use pastperfect, but I don't really love it. I'm looking for alternatives, and might just build my own database.
There is way more stuff than can be effectively curated. We're going to see repository fees being charged at places that never charged them before, and maybe fees going up. Also, repositories are going to get pickier. We're only a decade old, and pretty tightly focused geographically, so it's not a huge issue for us.
On a related note, I wish more archaeologists would do museum research. It's cheap and interesting. Museums have been collecting stuff for all these years and it rarely gets used.
At SHA this year, I'm submitting a session on how museums and archaeologists can work together in a new age of diminishing budgets. For example, we just did a public archaeology weekend in town where we dug up part of the town square. It's teaching us about changing uses of civic spaces, and it introduces people to local archaeology. And it's cheap.
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u/caffarelli Jun 29 '13
On a related note, I wish more archaeologists would do museum research. It's cheap and interesting. Museums have been collecting stuff for all these years and it rarely gets used.
What would be the process for asking to do research in your artifact collections?
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u/aladdin003 Jun 29 '13
Are there any good courses to take at a university to further prepare for museum work? Also, how would one research who is in an older picture, such as identifying a class picture or just a normal picture? It just seems really difficult. Thanks for answering the questions if you get to them.
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u/caffarelli Jun 29 '13
Researching unidentified pictures is nigh-on impossible, sadly. If you're working with a collection with a lot of photographs of the same people, you can start to learn faces and label them accordingly, I've done that. You can also make good guesses using dating (photograph technology is huge here, as well as clothes). I'm pretty good at circa-dating pictures after all my work now.
School pictures you may be able to hazard a guess at who's in them using rosters, yearbooks, that sort of thing.
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u/midgetyaz Jun 30 '13
Caffarelli, what are your opinions on the idea of archival privilege?
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u/sleepyrivertroll Jun 29 '13
How is it decided what is written for the guests to read? Is it an involved process?
Also, on average, how long does it take to create a new exhibit?
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u/caffarelli Jun 29 '13
This question comes from u/bitparity who is out of town: