Steering Committee & SDI
Our SDI proposal was adjudicated on September 18th. While we hope to hear the outcome sometime in October, with the current political landscape it is possible that the announcement will not be made until mid-November.
The next PSC meeting will be held at 10am on October 16th at the Colchester Historical Society Museum & Archives in Truro.
Site Visits
September was very busy for site visits. I literally traveled from one end of the province to the other, visiting 20 partner sites. After a fairly slow start to the summer tourism season, things seem to have really picked up in July & August. Some museums even reported an increased visitation of 10-15%, mostly from local & provincial travelers. What a great trend to see!
Jen & Anna have also been visiting selected sites as part of the CHIN Enrichment Project. This month they visited 5 partner museums, providing them with digitization training and offering on-site assistance with enrichment work.
CHIN Enrichment Project
Have you sent in your art objects to Jen & Anna yet? If not, you need to do it right away. If you don’t have art objects in your collection, send in some of your favorite items instead. Anna will only be with us until the end of October, so let’s inundate her with research requests before she leaves.
Jen & Anna have a special request. While we’ve seen a lot of variety in objects being submitted this year, we have yet to see any whirligigs. So if you have a whirligig in your collection, give the girls a call and tell them that you’d like to showcase it on Artefacts Canada.
Don’t forget that the new Passage self-assessment gives bonus points for participating in CHIN projects, so this is a great way to learn more about your collection and boost your score at the same time.
Data Cleaning
Now that site visits are completed I will be getting back to data cleaning. There are only a few sites that have yet to receive this extra assistance, and in order to meet our SDI funding obligations we must complete this by the end of November. In order to meet our deadline, it is important that we move this along as swiftly as possible.
Data Entry Support (aka Melanie’s work)
Melanie is still working on entering backlogged records, but is nearing the end. Once completed, the Queens County Museum will be finished the first two steps of the Passage game plan, having everything entered skeletally, and the entire database uploaded to Artefacts Canada.
Artefacts Canada Tally
Last month I reported that uploading would slow down since almost everyone had their entire database online. Well, I am pleased to say that I jumped the gun a little bit. September saw the most uploading to date, with 22,662 records going online. We now have a grand total of 132,690 records on Artefacts Canada. Great work everyone!
Here are the current regional standings:
Southwest: 57,918
Central: 29,015
Northeast: 24,623
Cape Breton: 21,134
Congratulations to the Southwest Region for uploading 18,000 records this month! It looks like they really don’t want to lose that top spot.
Blog Polls
This is your last chance to answer the blog poll before the results are shared at the October 16th Steering Committee meeting. This is a crucial question to answer as it will affect how & when we deliver training in the future. Who is doing your database work? Staff? Volunteers? Students? We need to know, so scroll to the bottom of the page and pick the one that fits your museum.
After traveling around our fair province all summer, Karin is going to take a little vacation before shifting gears and doing full-time office work again. She will be leaving Friday, October 2nd and won't be back until Tuesday, October 13th. Should you need assistance during this period please contact Jen at 423-4677 or project@ansm.ns.ca.
