February 2010 Update

Renewal Contracts

Renewal contracts were due on January 31^st.  If you haven’t sent yours in yet, it is absolutely imperative that you do so immediately.  Without a valid contract, services and support will not be delivered.

ITCMAC Meeting

The ITCMAC’s first meeting was held on Friday in Truro.  Thanks to Aidan Norton and the Colchester Historical Museum for hosting.  Topics of discussion included remote assistance & web conferencing, posting information in a Resources section of ANSM’s new website, and Anita & Karin’s upcoming trip to Ottawa to meet with CHIN and the other provincial associations.  It was requested that the issue of “old loans” and “orphan works” be raised at the PMA meetings as an advocacy issue. 

The next meeting will be held in Port Hawkesbury on April 22^nd (preceding the ANSM conference) and will be open to all participating museums.  This will be a dinner meeting, so please RSVP to Karin if you are interested in attending.

ANSM Website – Resources Section

As ANSM’s website continues to take shape, I have been working on developing resources to post for members.  The collections management documentation package will be available online, as will tip sheets on a variety of subjects.  And I’m taking requests.  Please let me know what resources you would like to see online.  This is something that will continue to develop as time and resources allow, so having a member’s wish list of items to get online would be a great help.

CHIN Digital Heritage Symposium

If you haven’t checked them out yet, Karin has posted her Symposium notes on the blog in four sections.  Find out how museums of all shapes and sizes are using technology to enhance their activities and expand their audiences.

Artefacts Canada Tally

With such a short month and the CHIN enrichment project being finished, most people took a break from uploading this month.  But one region uploaded another 862 records this month.  That means we now have a grand total of 153,993 records on Artefacts Canada.

Here are the new regional stats:

Southwest: 68,589

Central: 39,093

Northeast: 24,909

Cape Breton: 21,402

Congratulations to the Southwest Region for being the only group to upload this month.

Blog Polls

Thanks to everyone who voted in the recent poll about loans management.  The results were discussed at our ITCMAC meeting on February 19^th, and we will be looking for ways to assist participating museums with this issue.  Here is the summary of results:

Question: How do you manage loans in your collection?

• We have a loan policy – 81%
• We track our loans with our database/paper documents – 51%
• We regularly renew loan agreements/return items to lenders – 29%
• We don’t know where/how to start – 11%
• We just hope that no one comes to ask for objects back – 3%

Our next polling question is about how you are currently marketing the museum online.  As you know, we will be writing a report on online marketing this year, complete with realistic recommendations on how to increase your profile and expand your audience.  These results will be discussed at the April meeting, so please let us know what you’re doing.  This is a quick and easy way to provide excellent feedback to the ITCMAC which helps us better meet your needs.  Scroll to the bottom of the page to find the poll, and remember that you can select multiple answers.