November 2010 Update

CNSA Workshop

view from the Alexander Graham
Bell Museum in Baddeck

This year I enrolled in the Council of Nova Scotia Archives’ Core Curriculum program.  This means that once I attend all six workshops and successfully complete the homework assignments, I’ll get a nice little certificate that says I know a bit about the archival world.  The first week of November had me traveling up to lovely Baddeck for the Introduction to Preservation workshop.  

Social Media Workshop

The social media strategic development workshop took place on November 16^th at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.  We had 10 participants from the Central and Southwest regions.  Reviews were good, and also gave us some great feedback on how to improve the workshop.  Due to the number of people wanting to attend, we have scheduled a second workshop for December 10^th in Wolfville at Acadia University.  More information can be found on our website, or by calling the office.

ANSM Facebook Fan Page

In conjunction with the social media workshop, ANSM has officially joined the social media world on Facebook.  We view this as a professional development opportunity, as we can quickly share resources, links, success stories, event information...our imagination is really the limit here.  So if you’re on Facebook, we’d love to have your join our little group.  The more the merrier.

QR Code Project

QR Code travels

Alexandra and Josh have completed the official site visits, as well as the content for two museums.  This month they visited the Admiral Digby Museum, O’Dell House Museum, Shelburne County Museum, Citadel Hill Army Museum, Creamery Square Heritage Centre, Colchester Historical Museum, NS Sport Hall of Fame, NS Museum of Natural History and Memory Lane Heritage Village. They’re still spending a lot of their time on content development for the other participants, and Josh is working on the branding of each site’s print materials.  Since iPhones will geotag where you take your photos, we have a nice little map that shows where the team have been.

Database Renewal Project

The beta version of the new CollectiveAccess database system is now ready.  Our next step is to put in some test data and then bring in a few members of the Information Management & Access Committee to test it out.  This work will be completed before the holiday break, which means that we’ll begin the migration process in January.  While I know everyone is anxious to get the new system, we’ll be taking our time to make sure that everything goes smoothly. 

IMPORTANT:  If you have not responded to the database survey, you will not be given priority for migration to the new system. 

Artefacts Canada Tally

Being November we didn’t see a whole lot of uploading this month.  The central region was the only region to upload records this month, adding 781 to the tally.  This gives us a grand total of 157,321 collection records on Artefacts Canada.  

Here are the new regional stats:

Southwest: 69,923

Central: 40,429

Northeast: 25,731

Cape Breton: 21,238

Congratulations to the Acadian House Museum and Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame for being the only museums to upload new information this month. 

Blog Poll

Since not too many people wanted to share how they’ve dealt with the economic recession, I’ve decided to leave this poll up for awhile longer.  Remember that this is totally anonymous.