Textile/Museum Collections: A Question.

[MissMaggie]

This is a question for those of you who do work with or have worked with museums and historical collections.

I'm working on a project at school to somehow catalog, organize and document the original garments we own. What I'd like to know is what programs, methods or systems do you use to keep track of things and record necessary information about items in your collections? Also, for those of you who work with textiles, What information other than measurements and fiber content do you record or take note of? I'd like to do the research about how to go about this myself, but I only have 15 weeks to do work that will probably end up taking years. I want as much time as I can to actually do the work and make the originals we own usable to use as research tools. I can't begin to thank you enough!!

[slhughes]

Re: Textile/Museum Collections: A Question.

Many museums use a commercial software package called "Past Perfect," and it gets excellent reviews. At our site we have found it to be very flexible, very easy to use, and suitable for many different types of collections. You may put as many photographs of the object as you wish in the record, and there's plenty of room for "notes" on the provenance of the object, &c. A new upgrade allows you to create a virtual museum on the web and contains a membership database. Most of the museums with major collections here in Kentucky (Kentucky History Center, Kentucky Horse Park, Filson Historical Society, Speed Art Museum) use Past Perfect.

When cataloguing textiles, it's helpful to those who come after you to be as descriptive as possible - make note of possible alterations, machine vs. hand sewn, provenance if there is any (including "assumptions" noted as such giving the reason why such assumptions may have been made).

Hope this helps.

Susan L. Hughes
Frankfort, Kentucky

[dnaples]

Re: Textile/Museum Collections: A Question.

When I did an internship at the Hildene Museum in Manchester, VT we also used Past Perfect. I did not get to use it very extensively and I was mostly just archiving books in the collections, but for me it was very easy to use. The curator of the museum, Brian Knight, says that he loves the program. So just highlighting another museum who uses Past Perfect to archive their collections.

[shubal]

Re: Textile/Museum Collections: A Question.

If time is a problem, don't mess with software issues such as Past Perfect ( or what our museum uses, File Maker or other museums use Access), do something in Word that can easily be translated later into whatever system the museum people in the future want.
Just create for yourself a template and FOLLOW it.

Template suggestions for an artifact description:
Number of artifact (create one if you have to or just use what the university uses to reference the item).
Name of artifact
Size: be consistent such as always do length by width, not width by length.
Try to a thickness measurement if you have a heavy quilt.
Color(s).
Condition: Tears and holes, figure out a top and bottom, a left and a right and reference the marks or tears etc, according to those sides, also do wear spots or stains (this should be easy with garments but is harder with quilts and coverlets).
Unique features about the item.
Ownership of the item, possible personal connections.
What Susan said too is very good.