January 2018 Update

Does anyone else feel like January flew by? Another month in the books. This blog post is packed full of important updates. We spent the majority of January preparing for another busy year!

CollectiveAccess

There is now 289, 978 artifacts documented with 157, 328 associated images, which means that 269 new records and 3,372 images have been added to CollectiveAccess this month - great work!

Here's what the numbers look like at the regional level:
Southwest - 127, 019 artifacts,  61, 837 images
Central - 100, 344 artifacts, 43, 698 images
Northeast -  33, 126 artifacts, 36, 978 images
Cape Breton - 29, 489 artifacts,  14, 815 images


Congratulations to the Northeast region for adding the most images (2,122) during the month of January & to the Central region for taking the runner up spot, adding an additional 908 images last month! Good job.

Tip of the Month

93.4.1

Items behind glass - Try to avoid overhead florescent lights and using flash. This will eliminate glare. I recommend photographing the frame overhead. A stepladder will come in handy for larger framed items (please ensure you have a spotter, safety comes first!).
< So we are on the right track here. I would recommend positioning the camera directly overhead to ensure the frame is not on an angle. I would then remove the scale and crop out the black border.

Photo Kit - did you know that ANSM's member institutions can borrow the photography kit? This includes two backdrops (white and grey), lighting, tripod, and manual (camera not included). It is available for a three week period. Spots are filling up! Please contact me as soon as possible to reserve a spot. It's the perfect time to photograph larger items in your collection. Pick-up and drop off at the ANSM office (Halifax).

Fleming College Partnership 2018

2014.23

Since 2012, ANSM has partnered with students enrolled in the Museum Management & Curatorship program at Fleming College and we are excited to work with them again! Students will work with 10 sites in the Advisory Service to complete data cleaning and research for approx. 290 records in CollectiveAccess. This year, students are starting the data cleaning phase mid-February. They will also complete a research report for 1 assigned artifact each. How exciting!


Museum Studies Program Update - exciting courses are ahead of us!

Collections Management & Curatorship - April 5-6, 2018 at Joggins Fossil Institute (Registration to open in February) Facilitated by Valerie Lenethen.

Interpretation I: Public Programming - May 24-25, 2018 at Cape Breton Miners Museum (Registration to open TBD) Facilitated by Virginia Stephen.

Museums 101 - October 2018, Central, Exact location TBD Facilitated by Karin Kierstead

Click here to learn more.

Evaluation Program Update - Evaluator Applications for 2018 now open!

ANSM is seeking dedicated and qualified heritage professionals to join us for the Museum Evaluation Program in 2018. Evaluators are an important part of the program and contribute expertise, observation and insight to the process.

We are accepting applications now. More information (including job description and application form) can be found on our website, or please call us with any questions you may have. We look forward to hearing from you. Deadline for applications is Monday February 12th, at midnight.

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In Other News

Musefund

For the month of December 2017, proceeds from the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame sport simulator went towards MuseFund. On January 11th, The Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame shared their MuseFund donation with their Facebook followers:

Anita, Shane, and Katie

"Thank you to everyone who played the simulator during December! You contributed $326 to MuseFund, an endowment fund that supports the future of Nova Scotia's many excellent museums! Today we were very happy to hand the cheque over to Anita Price of the Association of Nova Scotia Museums."

Thanks to the staff at the NSSHF & those who used the simulator! Your support is greatly appreciated.

New Resource

Jasper Visser has recently shared a free exercise on his blog called Potatoes* – The Exhibition - A game of collective storytelling. Also, a perfect warm-up activity for your team!

Changes to Artefacts Canada

"Data from the current Artefacts Canada Humanities application is being migrated to an interim Artefacts Canada application which will be available in April 2018.  Until then, the current Artefacts Canada Humanities will remain available.  In the interim application, at first only a basic search will be available, and more functionalities will be added in the following months. Users will be able to do general searches, and to filter search results by province, and by Infomuse and Novamuse network. Museums will be able to contribute updates and new records to Artefacts Canada Humanities. The current Artefacts Canada Humanities will be decommissioned once the interim solution is launched.

The Natural Sciences database will be taken off line in January 2018 and will be decommissioned.  Our analysis showed a very low level of contributions and usage of this database, indicating that it was not meeting the needs of the natural sciences community. In our letter to the contributors, we have informed them of the decommissioning of the database and offered to send them a copy of their data.

In the meantime, we will continue to work on a longer-term solution using linked open data, but this will be a multi-year process. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch."

Message from: Charlie Costain - Director, Heritage Information, Canadian Conservation Institute / Canadian Heritage Information Network, Department of Canadian Heritage, Government of Canada