Moving A Museum

    

    For the past month the museum has mainly been preparing to move the majority of its collection to a new location consisting of three rooms, two large and one small, in the basement of the 5th Regiment Armory building. Within the last three weeks, two of the rooms have had storage systems installed so that the museum’s collection can be properly stored. These rooms also provide an extra level of security given that only employees at the 5th Regiment Armory would be able to access these rooms.  In addition, these rooms are less susceptible to fire given the masonry walls and tile flooring, as well as a sprinkler system in all three of the rooms. However, the greatest advantage to moving the museum’s collection to these three rooms is that they provide greater space for storage which will allow the collection to continue to grow. 

One of the rooms contains high density storage units that are on rails and are motor powered. The contents of this high-density storage include uniforms, hats, portraits, medals, and other objects which are the most valuable within the museum’s collection. A bonus of having the high-density storage in this location is that the room is more easily climate controlled and secure than the room in which these items are currently stored. In addition, this new high density storage system has a special cabinet that is going to be used to contain mold contaminated materials until they can be properly cleaned and treated.  One of the main reasons that the museum collection has to be moved to the basement is because the collection’s current location, in a room on the first floor of the 5th Regiment Armory building, does not have a floor which would be able to support the weight of the high-density storage system that was installed in the basement. 

The other large room has had shelving units installed and will contain the museum’s archive. This archive consists of numerous documents, books, field manuals, photographs, etc. In addition to the shelving units flat files are going to be installed to maximize the number of items that can be stored in this room. This room will also serve as the primary room in which the museum staff’s workstations are going to be located. However, given the amount of material and storage units that are going to be in this room, the amount of space that will be available to those working in this room will be minimal.  

The third smaller room will eventually be converted into an area which will hold the museum’s firearms collection. The plan is to have special safes installed in the room to ensure that this collection remains secured and, given the location of this room in an adjoining hallway between the two larger rooms, it will be easier to access than the current safe that is used to house the firearms. However, it is unclear when the new safes will be installed and, as of now, it appears to just be an idea until the appropriate funding and preparations have been made. For now the room will be used as an office and some of the museum’s collection will be stored in it. 

The process of preparing and moving the museum’s collection to this new location, while still in the early stages, has been a point of stress for everyone given the fact that the move needs to be completed by March.  This timetable exists because the room in which the museum’s offices and collection now reside is going to be used by another department within the 5th Regiment Armory and, therefore, it is critical that the move is completed on schedule. However, there are still some issues with planning how objects and archival material will be organized within the new location that could present a bit of an issue as the situation continues to develop. Therefore, the beginning of the move has been relatively slow and methodical as we attempt to ensure that any potential issues with storage are minimized.

When not assisting with this moving process, the majority of my time has been spent continuing to learn how to use the PastPerfect system for cataloguing. During the past month I have catalogued over fifty items in the collection, including field manuals, training circulars, a pen and pencil set, military patches, and award certificates that date back to the 1940s. Overall, this process has been very interesting because, unlike what I may have encountered had I interned at a larger or more well-funded institution, many mistakes were made by previous museum staff in the cataloguing process.  Therefore, coming across these cataloguing mistakes, learning what was done wrong, and what the proper way to catalogue is has been greatly beneficial. In addition, dealing with all the cataloguing mistakes has allowed me to see how much improper cataloguing techniques can interfere with a museum’s operations. Using improper catalogue accession and object ID numbers can make it incredibly difficult for future museum staff and researchers to find objects and documents within a collection. There have been more than a few instances where we may know that an object is in our collection but are unable to determine where it is because, when the object was acquired and stored, the person that catalogued it failed to indicate the item’s location. In addition, improper cataloguing is a big issue when it comes to knowing how and when objects or documents were added to the museum’s collection. There are countless examples within the museum’s collection where it’s virtually impossible to determine who donated items, when they were donated, and if/where those items are in the collection. All of these issues can arise from improper cataloguing and while these issues may not immediately present themselves, they can be crippling for an institution years down the line.