Artifacts and Accession Numbers

Photo: "Back Closet 2"

    In January of 2026, the interns and I returned to the Howard County Center for African

American Culture after winter break and got into the bulk of the collections. There is work to be

done both in the museum and in the library, but we started work in the museum’s “Back Closet

2” which had three bookshelves full of materials. All of the interns were given access to a

museum spreadsheet, which was divided into three tabs. The first tab was titled “Data Drafting”

and this was where we would record all of the information about objects that had attached

accession numbers. The second tab was for objects with conflicting accession numbers, and the

third was for objects with no accession numbers.

    The majority of what we catalogued over the first month had no accession numbers, and

were taken out of the closet for us by our internship supervisor. These included mostly paper

materials, including newspaper clippings, photographs, posters, calendars, community flyers,

family reunion records, and more. With these, we recorded all information available such as

dates, names, dimensions, materials, and condition, and left them organized in the center’s

office.

    After we finished with that portion of materials, we began on the rest of “Bookshelf 2” in

the back closet. Most of these objects now had accession numbers with them, and the vast

majority so far have been vinyl records that were bought, donated, or gifted to the center.

Recording objects with accession numbers is similar to the ones without, but we also had to

include the number, the source and collection, as well as the location (e.g. Back Closet 2,

Bookshelf 2, Shelf 3). After accessioned objects were recorded in the Data Drafting spreadsheet

tab, we then had to enter them into Past Perfect, the museum collection management software

that the center uses. Most of this was copy and pasting information from the spreadsheet to the

software, but there was quite a learning curve in getting accustomed to using PastPerfect. So far,

the internship has been mostly data collection and entry, and I’m gaining valuable experience in

handling and managing museum collections.