January 2010 Update

Renewal Contracts

Renewal contracts were due on January 31^st. If you haven’t yet sent yours in, please do so immediately.

ITCMAC Meeting

The first official meeting of the newly named IT & Collections Management Advisory Committee (fondly referred to as the “itchy committee”) will take place on February 19^th at the Colchester Historical Museum. Aside from the old Passage Steering Committee members that you all know and love (Derek, Gail, Dayle, Linda, and Jim) we will be welcoming Valerie Lenethan from the Nova Scotia Museum to the group. The agenda will include an ITCM (Passage) membership policy, evaluation survey and financial review.

CHIN Digital Heritage Symposium

CHIN will be hosting a Digital Heritage Symposium at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver on Feb. 4-5^th. Karin will be participating in the Symposium online and will post a review of the event on the blog.

CHIN Enrichment Project

January 31^st also marked the end of our CHIN enrichment project. Thank you to everyone who participated and helped us meet the project deliverables. This year 27 museums took part, 8 of which had never before uploaded to Artefacts Canada. A total of 465 art works and other objects were photographed, researched, and uploaded. Here's our fun little statue (inspired by the Islands Museum) that helped us keep track of how many records were completed.  We added the bird (inspired by Colchester Historical Museum) when we reached the top of our little man's hat.  Check our the uploaded records to see if you can find our inspirations.

While Jen has finished this aspect of her work, she will be staying on staff until mid-March in order to tie up loose ends and assist with other ANSM activities.

Equipment Purchase

The external hard drives have arrived, and the order for microphones & webcams will be placed this week. In order to document delivery, sites will be required to sign a receipt. We will do our best to deliver these as quickly, taking advantage of regional meetings & events whenever possible.

Museums in the News

Several Passage sites have made the news recently. First is the Antigonish Heritage Museum, which became the focal point for a fundraiser for Haiti last week. The museum was featured prominently on the CTV evening news for playing its part in the fundraiser.

Also on the list is former PSC Chairman Ryan Scranton of the Annapolis Heritage Society. Ryan’s blog Annapolis Royal Heritage has been nominated for 3 different awards – 100 Best Museum & Curatorial Blogs of the World, and two from the 2010 Canadian Weblog Awards under the categories of arts & culture and placeblog. If you’ve never checked out his blog it’s well worth the visit, and you’ll understand why it’s getting so much attention.

Artefacts Canada Tally

As our CHIN enrichment project came to a close, we saw a little flurry of uploading. 8,027 new records were uploaded in January, giving Passage sites a grand total of 153,131 records on Artefacts Canada.

Here are the new regional stats:

Southwest: 67,727

Central: 39,093

Northeast: 24,909

Cape Breton: 21,402

Congratulations to the Central Region for uploading the most records this month!

Blog Polls

If you haven’t already, please make sure you vote in the blog poll about loans management at the bottom of the page. Results will be shared & discussed at the February 19^th ITCMAC meeting, which means that we need everyone to answer by the 18^th.

That's all for this month. If you're ever in Halifax feel free to stop by the office.  And don't forget to check out Anita's blog about her museums adventures in Nova Scotia.  Until next time...