Museum Site Visits

Looking over an artifact with Kathy at
James House Museum.

          As many of you may already know from my visits, my name is Sandi Stewart. I am the Advisory Assistant here at ANSM and have been given an amazing opportunity to travel across our lovely province to perform advisory site visits and meet those in our partnering museums who make site operations possible. The core staff and volunteers are truly the backbone to our museum operations and I can say with great pleasure that there are some very passionate and creative people in my field across Nova Scotia. 

Miranda using our light box at Cole
Harbour Heritage Farm Museum.

          I have stepped foot in 21 sites so far this summer, approximately 6 sites per week and each one of them are full of historical and cultural gems that shine a light on Nova Scotia’s rich past. Along my travels, I work closely with staff on database efforts (CollectiveAccess) to ensure they are comfortable with the digitization process. A part of this process is providing a mini workshop on photography, which allows students and volunteers to gain valuable experience handling and photographing artifacts, I am happy to report that many students expressed great interest in this. Along with the help of the museum staff, approximately 10 artifacts per site have been photographed so far, which will result in at least 200 future entries to the database but we are not stopping there! I will be continuing my adventures in the upcoming months so stay tuned for more telling photos. My goal is to provide our partnering museums with the guidance and support they need so that they feel empowered and motivated to continue on with database work in the future. You can check out their hard work on NovaMuse.

Heather and I in front of some
#ProjectVicky artifacts at
Parkdale-Maplewood Community Museum!

I would like to make note that I have worked closely with a lot of wonderful people along this journey who have encouraged me to grow and experiment with ideas. Karin Kierstead, my advisor and right-hand, has taught me many tricks of the trade along the way. I also had the opportunity to work alongside our Fleming Intern, Heather McCorquodale on a few projects: #ProjectVicky, #MuseumBasketCases, and #WhoAmI. 

If you are curious about these projects, feel free to check out our NovaMuse posts on Facebook and Twitter. I want to thank Heather for her assistance and wish her all the best after graduation, I will miss her directions on the road! As for me, I am sure you will hear from me again as I continue this exciting journey. Be sure to follow our progress on our social media pages, I try to update daily!

Sandi