August 2022 Update

TRACK Updates

August saw the TRACK working group meet and discuss the program developments to date. The assessment document is being released next week to pilot sites, and we are looking forward to several fall training opportunities. To learn more about these and to register, visit our website.

Unlocking Museums Collections Sessions

We've had three more community sessions this month and continue to learn A LOT as we sit together and listen to community members. As with the previous sessions, Millbrook, Cherry Brook and Antigonish were each unique but we came away feeling like this relational, conversational path is the clear way forward. We are so inspired by the openness and honesty of this work; of the communities we are meeting with and the desire of new friends to go down this path together. 

As you can imagine, the pages and pages of notes that we mentioned in last month's update have grown substantially. We are still processing and pondering, and we're not done yet! We still have more sessions to go, one of which will be held during the Interpretation Canada conference. This one will be a sort of recap of what we've done and learned so far. It will be held on October 3rd in the afternoon. If you're interested in attending, let us know.

To learn more about this work and upcoming sessions, visit our website.

CollectiveAccess Updates

We've been getting a lot of questions about the databases synchronizing with NovaMuse, and I'm very pleased to report that we're about to push "go" on the new sync. Everything is now set up and next week we will start working our way through all the databases, one by one. As you can imagine this will take some time since there are more than 50, but that's okay. We're finally making this important switch and improvement. 

Almost every museum was busy in their database this month, adding and editing records and images. There are now 359,960 records and 332,076 associated images and media files. Regionally, here's the breakdown: 
Southwest: 154,556 records and 109,395 images
Central: 109,519 records and 113,252 images
Northeast: 62,424 records and 82,658 images
Cape Breton: 33,461 records and 26,851 images

Your image lesson of the month is a bit of a funny one. We've been talking a lot during our community

sessions about the importance of taking our time and getting high quality images of items; that this is a way to respect the community of origin as well as the object itself. There is always general agreement on this, as well as recognition that previous photographers and digitization technicians may not have taken this approach. Lately we have noticed a particular kind of these older images, where it seems that people were trying to get as many items photographed as quickly as possible. So rather than photographing each item individually, group photos of exhibit spaces and storage shelves were taken. As you can tell from this example, that makes it very hard to focus on the desired object. So as you are looking through your database and digitization needs, keep an eye our for images like this. Then you can go and find those objects, photograph them on their own and give them the respect they deserve.

Educational Partnerships

We said goodbye to Emma and Madeline this month, and the SMU students wrapped up their coursework, so it feels quite different around ANSM these days. We'll be meeting with our SMU partners to debrief and discuss next steps, and are also speaking with other educational institutions about opportunities for their students. We are also looking forward to being actively involved in the social studied teachers association conference this fall, where we will be promoting museums and NovaMuse and especially NovaMuseEd.

Keep your eye out for some blog posts from our interns and students in the coming months. They left us with a lot so we've prescheduled them...the gift that keeps giving.