Today was more sorting, but I learned something else about archive storage. To be more specific, I learned about one of the most important tools in any collection storage space: Humidity control. When I went in, the collections room was incredibly humid! The curator took some measurements, and we were both shocked to see that the humidity level was 85 (I’m not entirely sure of the scale, but I’m assuming it’s out of 100). Normally, the collections space was supposed to be at a nice balanced 45.
The reason why it’s important to not have as much humidity in collections spaces is because it can actually promote deterioration of some materials, like metal and paper. Also, humidity causes cardboard, wood, and other more porous materials to get slightly soggy, which makes them a perfect home for a potential mold growth. So humidity simply won’t do.
The curator fired up a dehumidifier in the collections room as a temporary fix, and hopefully the HVAC system will be fixed sometime this week.
Today was pretty busy! I was planning on trying to get more sorting done, but today seemed to have other plans. In the morning, I helped the curator take stock of returning traveling exhibits. It’s important to do, because there’s always a chance that an exhibit will come back damaged or broken. So, we take them out of their bag, check all their parts, and then pack it back up and put it in storage.
I didn’t get to sort a whole ton today, and I only managed to get through a quarter of a box, but I’m finally down to the last three-ish boxes of the Wynn collection! I’ve found an entire box that’s just magazines and newspaper clippings, along with some miscellaneous material, so I’ve been sorting through that. Once I’m finished with the cardboard boxes, I’ll have to sort through all the newspapers to weed out ones that don’t have anything to do with the donor or Black Iowa History in general.
Unfortunately, we were a little short-staffed today, so I took on front desk duty in the afternoon. It was incredibly quiet today, even more so than on Fridays. But the few business things I did handle involved transferring a call to the curator (which was a lot harder than it sounds. Their phone system was hard to work, especially since this was the first call I’ve had to transfer.), getting back more traveling exhibits, and receiving flyers for an event that will happen in the Museum on Friday.
Today was super productive! I got through one and two-thirds moving boxes of papers today from the Wynn collection, meaning that once I finish this box, I have two left to go: the Personal Information box, and the Oversize box.
Unfortunately, we’re probably not going to be able to keep a lot of the things in the Personal Information box, since it has things like banking information and social security numbers on it. Even if people’s belongings are brought to a museum, it’s still common courtesy to leave sensitive information like that alone and shred it to protect the person’s privacy, even if they’ve passed away. This is because it’s entirely possible that there might be information on people who are still very much alive, and the last thing anyone would need is a museum accidentally making their sensitive information public knowledge.
As for the Oversize box, that one is going to probably take a bit longer to sort through due to the sizes of the objects, but also because of folder creation. Since oversize items can’t fit in a typical file folder or archival folder, the collections room has folder stock that has to be folded by hand to accommodate different larger sizes. So, not only will I be sorting through things, but I’ll be making folders for them by hand with other tools (like the menacingly-named Bone-folder), which is very satisfying, but it does make the process take a bit longer than just normal sorting.
Despite the menacing name, the Bone-folder is really just a reverse letter-opener. Sadly, this one is also made of wood, not bone.
I finally finished sorting through all the boxes! The Oversized things didn’t take nearly as long as I thought they would, so I’m finally done! There are no more cardboard boxes, and nearly everything has an archival box home. I’m really proud of myself, since that took a lot of work, but I’m not entirely done with the collection just yet.
No more cardboard!
I’m really proud of this!Now that I’m done with the archival papers, I need to sort through each newspaper clipping that I put to the side and sort those into smaller categories. But, unlike what I did with the archive papers, I don’t have to sort the clippings by year, just by what we’re going to do with them. Right now, my categories are “To Scan”, “Don’t Scan” (I found some magazine-type paper that doesn’t deteriorate like newspaper does), “Scan for Other Purposes” (for specifically not Wynn-related things, but things the museum would like to keep), and finally “Toss”. I find it really interesting to go over these one by one, it just adds even more to the story of Mrs. Wynn’s life.
The final count of the newspaper pile is…fourteen folders worth!Unfortunately, Front Desk Friday didn’t happen today, and it’s probably not going to happen again for a while, since another volunteer is taking over on Fridays for a bit. So instead, I’ll be having more Welcome Desk Wednesdays until mid-July.
I’m super happy with all the work I got done this week! Now that I’ve knocked out a big project, and after I finish sorting and scanning the newspapers, I’ll probably float around with some smaller projects, which should be a nice change-up after spending a while on this one!