Research and Inventory Worksheets

We're done! Class is over. Can you believe it? The last day of the exhibit is Thursday.  I bought some (hopefully) matching paint today and it's already in the Museum awaiting application on the Tasmanian Sojourn wall next week.  Have a great final's week! I'll begin grading hardcopies of the inventory sheets tonight. 

Accession vs. OTHER Numbers

There is only one place on your forms for a trinomial: "Accession No." "The Beardsley Inventory No." is NOT an accession number/trinomial, it is the number found in the Beardsley Inventory produced back in the late 1950s listing all the objects donated. It is digitized for you on SacCT. The third number in the accession no. trinomial MIGHT match the Beardsley Inventory No., but sometimes they confused objects during the 1974 retroactive accessioning process and the trinomial doesn't match. Open the Accession File on SacCT and check. 

I'll meet you guys in the classroom, collect the hardcopies of your assignment, have a brief discussion, and then we'll go down and have some refreshments in the museum. Last class today...we only have de-installation next week!

"Beardsley #" versus "Beardsley Inventory No."

Students: some of you are confusing the number found on some of the round tags "Beardsley #" (commonly also the SSC number) with the Beardsley Inventory No. called for on your worksheet. To find the Beardsley Inventory No., open the digital accession file on SacCT and search the original hand-written Beardsley inventory produced in the 1950s. 

In some instances, that number became the last in the accession trinomial (when those were assigned in 1974), but this wasn't always the case. Likewise, when the "Sacramento State College" catalog cards were produced in the 1960s, the original Beardsley Inventory number sometimes became the SSC Catalog No., but there were many (many) misattributions, misnumberings, etc. And then the MS-Access database has other problems.  Your job isn't to correct these in those records, but to record them as they appear and then to point out in the "Notes" portion, that these problems occurred.

Skirts

If you are researching one of the skirts with dyed fronds, let me know! Nancy found a great catalog in our library that details the varied ethnobotanical materials found in Maori skirts and I noticed that two of our more fragile skirts are very similar to a couple featured in her catalog.

Reminders

We will meet at 1:30 sharp in the library breezeway. I'll split the class into halves that will rotate between library research and touring the Special Collections. Don't forget that your last reading quiz is open until 11 a.m. tomorrow. 

For Seya (and Others).

At least some of you will recognize this. Click on the "Catalogue Entry" to learn more. I found this while looking for leads on a different object entirely.  This is the page that led me to this small, private collection.

Joe and CM Team (Maori Cloak)

This is posted for Joe, who is assigned the Maori cloak, but may also be of interest to the rest of the Colonial Milieu team

More

Another digital catalog with objects that look similar to some of ours. Who has the mat in the bottom of the exhibit case in the Full Circle team's area?

Smithsonian Catalogs

I'm posting this link in response to Maria's most recent post, but this catalog (and the many other online museum catalogs out there in cyberspace that you can easily locate through word and/or images searches that incorporate a key term for the object and the words museum or collection) will be very good leads for many of you. AND Carrie posted the link to the CAS online catalog recently (which has a bazillion fans from Polynesia, as well as many many other items). Use these sources to direct you to scholarly works.

Burke Museum Archaeology Research Fellowship

This fellowship is a wonderful opportunity for students (graduate or undergraduate). Contact me or Dr. Fisher for additional information.

Exhibit Teams and Blackboard Discussion Threads

By now, you all know at least one of your team members, since you are paired up to work on your Deed of Gift assignments. But you also need to be developing conversations/discussion threads within your individual Blackboard groups so that you can 1) begin research in the scholarly literature that relates to your unit of the exhibit 2) begin to identify and flesh out your team's interpretive components (didactic panels, photographs, maps, ephemera, artifacts, props and arrangements you feel will bring your section of the narrative to life), and 3) start to think about how you'll want to divide up fabrication tasks among yourselves.

On the larger class level, we still have a couple conversations that need to be continued collectively. First, there is the issue of the exhibit title. Drop into that discussion thread and share your thoughts. Do this not simply because it is a graded assignment, but also because exhibit development works exactly this way--with people bringing their creativity, quirky differences, life experiences, individual talents and scholarly perspectives to bear on a problem. We also need to develop a schematic for the entire exhibit, defining how the space (conscripted by walls, the lighting and the built-in exhibit cases) will be used. We have many options still for using the space and plenty of movable exhibit furniture. So give it some thought and we will discuss this on Tuesday, with an understanding that teams will design storyboards around a basic schematic that can still be changed as we continue the design process.