October 2022 Update

Strategic Planning

This month the ANSM board and staff gathered together to talk all things ANSM. There was good food, a lot of laughter, and a lot of serious conversation about where we are and where we need to go as an organization. We worked with a graphic facilitation team this time, which means we have a really cool infographic-style poster to share with you in the near future. As we talked, information and ideas were added to the poster. We all left feeling optimistic and even a little excited about the future of ANSM, and how we can better serve museums. 

TRACK Updates

The long-awaited assessment document has been circulated to pilot sites and meetings with these museums have started. We've been really enjoying getting out to regional meetings to share updates and brainstorm about this new program. 

Two more learning opportunities are coming up. First up is M'ikmaq Community Engagement Day at the Mi'kmaw Native Friendship Centre in Halifax. Theresa Meuse will be our facilitator for a day of discussions around Culture 101, Truth and Reconciliation, bias in the workplace, how we can work together, and more. This session will run from 10am-3pm and the small registration fee of $25 will cover lunch and nutrition breaks. Click here to register.

The second is our rescheduled Unearthing the Impacts of Unconscious Bias and Microaggressions workshop. Our friends at SMU are facilitating this one. Dr. Rohini Bannerjee and Deborah Brothers-Scott will lead participants through learning and self-reflection with the goal of mitigating the impacts of these issues in your museum. The workshop will take place on January 17th at 1030am. Click here to register.

If you are looking for general information about TRACK, or want to access recordings of previous learning opportunities, visit our website.

Regional Meetings

Last week the Fall regional meetings kicked off in the southwest at the Queens County Museum. These meetings are such a great chance to connect with museum peers and to learn about what's going on around the province. As mentioned above, we're going to talk about TRACK, and we will also be talking about an important advocacy opportunity. 

The Central Region meeting is tomorrow, Cape Breton's is Thursday, and the Northeast meeting is Friday. If you haven't yet registered for one of these meetings, visit our website. Meetings are free to attend and lunch will be provided. Hope to see you there!

Unlocking Community Museum Collections

We had a lovely time in Chéticamp this month to talk about how museums can better serve the Acadian community. As we've said with other sessions, this one was unique and fascinating. It was another step towards building bridges of understanding. The final Unlocking Collections session is happening November 17th in Amherst, with the Cumberland African Nova Scotia Association and Black Cultural Centre. To learn more and register, click here. 

CollectiveAccess Updates

Now that so many museums are closed for the winter, database activity has slowed down even more. What's really encouraging though is that the disparity between number of records and number of associated media files continues to lessen. There are now 360,729 records and 333,217 images entered in all the databases.

Regionally, here's how that translates:
Southwest: 154,717 records and 109,506 images
Central: 109,739 records and 113,927 images
Northeast: 62,812 records and 83,013 images
Cape Breton: 33,461 records and 26,771 images

We've talked before about the need for a methodical approach to collections management work - to build a good foundation first so that additional details can then be added in a logical way. A number of years ago we worked with museums to develop customized game plans so that workers would have specific and unique instructions on conducting database, inventory, and digitization work. If you don't have this, reach out! We will help you develop one. We've seen such great work from museums that use this approach. Game plans get everyone on the same page and working toward common goals. If you don't like the the building analogy, think of it like reading a book with your colleagues. It's a tome, but that's okay because you're all getting through it together.

Our image lesson of the month is seasonal. Fall in Nova Scotia means apple picking, right? And one of the wonderful things we have in museum collections that links to this tradition, is the barrel stencil. These are functional, artistic, and full of fantastic historical detail. You can learn about company names, families involved, business or farm location, and see logos or other branding in use. These are super cool. But because they are made out of very thin, cut metal, they can be really hard to read on an angle. This photo is a great example. We can tell that words have been cut out of the metal, and we can even read a few. But we can't easily decipher the entire object. Imagine the frustration of your online audience, staff member, volunteer, or researcher when they are looking at your museum's collection on NovaMuse or reviewing records in your database. Everything else in the shot is great - good framing, good lighting, good scale placement. But you can't truly see the object. 

Now let's look at the same barrel stencil with a slight adjustment. Wow right?! Treating this stencil like an artwork and shooting straight-on makes a beautiful, legible, amazingly clear shot. You can frame this and hang it in your home. Maybe without the scale, but you get the idea. Someone took the time to set up the shot and the result is impressive. Now imagine those same people looking at your record online, or working in your database in-house. You've sent a message to your external audience that your museum is professional, respectful, thoughtful, and an excellent caretaker of the collection. They may not sit there and think these things about you in a conscious way, but they will be understanding them on the subconscious level. Don't minimize the power of that message. 

Educational Partnerships

Last week we all went to the Social Studies Teachers Association Conference to share NovaMuseEd with teachers. The response was overwhelmingly positive; teachers like what they see and are excited for more. They also shared some ideas on how we can further improve this resource. So with that in mind, the great news is that Olivia has finished up four educational resources for NovaMuseEd this month. She has lots of ideas and is excited to see what else she can do before she wraps up her practicum in early December (that's the bad news...she isn't with us forever). If anyone wants to get their museum's educational programs online, feel free to reach out. 

In case you missed it...

We've quietly pre-scheduled a number of blog posts over the coming months. These were written by our recent interns, SMU students, and ANSM staff. So in case you missed it, we want to draw your attention to one written by Madeline on cleaning up the culture field in CollectiveAccess. Click here to read about what we found and how we can all use this field to its full potential.

Culture Cleaning

 Hello!

As part of the Unlocking Community Museum Collections project, one of my tasks this summer has been to 'clean' the CollectiveAccess Culture field. This has meant looking through each museum's database to see what has been entered into the culture field (that's a total of 349,748 records!). I have been making note of all the different cultures entered, keeping track of common trends, and correcting outdated language. 

One of the long-term goals of this project is to make the Culture field public on NovaMuse, thus making records searchable by culture. This project has a special focus on Nova Scotia's four founding communities: Acadian, African Nova Scotian, Gaelic, and Mi'kmaq. Ideally, all records associated with one of these cultures should be linked together and easily found. In order for this to work effectively, it is important for the field to be filled out correctly using consistent language. I thought I would share some trends and tips that I came across in my cleaning that might help us to make better use of the Culture field moving forward. 

Stats

Out of the 349,748 total records, only about 6% of them included a Culture field entry. Of the 56 databases, 8 of them included no culture entries at all and the rest had very few entries. We are hoping to increase use of this field in order to link as many objects to their cultures as possible. 
 

Language

Making sure the database records are as accurate and respectful as possible means using the most up-to-date and preferred language when describing cultural communities. It is also important to remain consistent with spelling and terminology. For instance, Acadian, African Nova Scotian, Gaelic, and Mi'kmaq are the preferred terms used within CollectiveAccess. 

A resource that I found to be very helpful when doing this work is Indigenous Peoples: Language Guidelines, created by the University of British Columbia. 

Culture vs. Group

The Culture field is meant to identify the culture associated with the object based on its social or geographic origin. Terms should be entered using the adjectival form. (ie. Scottish, German, Mi'kmaq, etc.)

The Group field is used to connect objects with associated groups or organizations. Political parties, religions, sports, fraternities, and clubs are all examples of grouping options. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that CollectiveAccess also has a Military Unit field, so this type of information does not need to be entered into either the Culture or Group field. 

Overall, the Culture field presents a great opportunity to improve access to information on NovaMuse and create a more user friendly experience for the public. Keeping in mind that this is an ongoing effort that will take time, we are already making exciting progress towards being able to link cultural records together. Next time you are entering or editing a record on CollectiveAccess, take a quick look at the Culture field to see if there is any information that could be added or updated.