October 2022 Update

Strategic Planning

This month the ANSM board and staff gathered together to talk all things ANSM. There was good food, a lot of laughter, and a lot of serious conversation about where we are and where we need to go as an organization. We worked with a graphic facilitation team this time, which means we have a really cool infographic-style poster to share with you in the near future. As we talked, information and ideas were added to the poster. We all left feeling optimistic and even a little excited about the future of ANSM, and how we can better serve museums. 

TRACK Updates

The long-awaited assessment document has been circulated to pilot sites and meetings with these museums have started. We've been really enjoying getting out to regional meetings to share updates and brainstorm about this new program. 

Two more learning opportunities are coming up. First up is M'ikmaq Community Engagement Day at the Mi'kmaw Native Friendship Centre in Halifax. Theresa Meuse will be our facilitator for a day of discussions around Culture 101, Truth and Reconciliation, bias in the workplace, how we can work together, and more. This session will run from 10am-3pm and the small registration fee of $25 will cover lunch and nutrition breaks. Click here to register.

The second is our rescheduled Unearthing the Impacts of Unconscious Bias and Microaggressions workshop. Our friends at SMU are facilitating this one. Dr. Rohini Bannerjee and Deborah Brothers-Scott will lead participants through learning and self-reflection with the goal of mitigating the impacts of these issues in your museum. The workshop will take place on January 17th at 1030am. Click here to register.

If you are looking for general information about TRACK, or want to access recordings of previous learning opportunities, visit our website.

Regional Meetings

Last week the Fall regional meetings kicked off in the southwest at the Queens County Museum. These meetings are such a great chance to connect with museum peers and to learn about what's going on around the province. As mentioned above, we're going to talk about TRACK, and we will also be talking about an important advocacy opportunity. 

The Central Region meeting is tomorrow, Cape Breton's is Thursday, and the Northeast meeting is Friday. If you haven't yet registered for one of these meetings, visit our website. Meetings are free to attend and lunch will be provided. Hope to see you there!

Unlocking Community Museum Collections

We had a lovely time in Chéticamp this month to talk about how museums can better serve the Acadian community. As we've said with other sessions, this one was unique and fascinating. It was another step towards building bridges of understanding. The final Unlocking Collections session is happening November 17th in Amherst, with the Cumberland African Nova Scotia Association and Black Cultural Centre. To learn more and register, click here. 

CollectiveAccess Updates

Now that so many museums are closed for the winter, database activity has slowed down even more. What's really encouraging though is that the disparity between number of records and number of associated media files continues to lessen. There are now 360,729 records and 333,217 images entered in all the databases.

Regionally, here's how that translates:
Southwest: 154,717 records and 109,506 images
Central: 109,739 records and 113,927 images
Northeast: 62,812 records and 83,013 images
Cape Breton: 33,461 records and 26,771 images

We've talked before about the need for a methodical approach to collections management work - to build a good foundation first so that additional details can then be added in a logical way. A number of years ago we worked with museums to develop customized game plans so that workers would have specific and unique instructions on conducting database, inventory, and digitization work. If you don't have this, reach out! We will help you develop one. We've seen such great work from museums that use this approach. Game plans get everyone on the same page and working toward common goals. If you don't like the the building analogy, think of it like reading a book with your colleagues. It's a tome, but that's okay because you're all getting through it together.

Our image lesson of the month is seasonal. Fall in Nova Scotia means apple picking, right? And one of the wonderful things we have in museum collections that links to this tradition, is the barrel stencil. These are functional, artistic, and full of fantastic historical detail. You can learn about company names, families involved, business or farm location, and see logos or other branding in use. These are super cool. But because they are made out of very thin, cut metal, they can be really hard to read on an angle. This photo is a great example. We can tell that words have been cut out of the metal, and we can even read a few. But we can't easily decipher the entire object. Imagine the frustration of your online audience, staff member, volunteer, or researcher when they are looking at your museum's collection on NovaMuse or reviewing records in your database. Everything else in the shot is great - good framing, good lighting, good scale placement. But you can't truly see the object. 

Now let's look at the same barrel stencil with a slight adjustment. Wow right?! Treating this stencil like an artwork and shooting straight-on makes a beautiful, legible, amazingly clear shot. You can frame this and hang it in your home. Maybe without the scale, but you get the idea. Someone took the time to set up the shot and the result is impressive. Now imagine those same people looking at your record online, or working in your database in-house. You've sent a message to your external audience that your museum is professional, respectful, thoughtful, and an excellent caretaker of the collection. They may not sit there and think these things about you in a conscious way, but they will be understanding them on the subconscious level. Don't minimize the power of that message. 

Educational Partnerships

Last week we all went to the Social Studies Teachers Association Conference to share NovaMuseEd with teachers. The response was overwhelmingly positive; teachers like what they see and are excited for more. They also shared some ideas on how we can further improve this resource. So with that in mind, the great news is that Olivia has finished up four educational resources for NovaMuseEd this month. She has lots of ideas and is excited to see what else she can do before she wraps up her practicum in early December (that's the bad news...she isn't with us forever). If anyone wants to get their museum's educational programs online, feel free to reach out. 

In case you missed it...

We've quietly pre-scheduled a number of blog posts over the coming months. These were written by our recent interns, SMU students, and ANSM staff. So in case you missed it, we want to draw your attention to one written by Madeline on cleaning up the culture field in CollectiveAccess. Click here to read about what we found and how we can all use this field to its full potential.