We are starting off 2012 with a bang! We are cataloging the entire museum! We have the exhibit hall, archives, and basement to go through. It is a huge task but Leslie, Emily, and I are ready for the challenge!!
We decided to close the Oconee Heritage Center during the month of January to catch up on cataloging. Don't know what cataloging is? Well here is what we are doing in a nutshell. We give each item that we have in our collection a number and we mark the item with a tag, paint, bag, etc... We thoroughly describe what the item is and give its dimension. We also have to go through accession forms (forms that a donor fills out when we get an item with its description and history) to get a background on the item. We also photograph the item with its catalog number. Then when all of that is done we enter it into a museum computer program that keeps track of everything.
That keeps us very busy! So that is why we had to close. We have thousands of artifacts, documents, and photographs. Relatively few items were cataloged when the museum first opened, so we have to go through every item, large and small! It is our duty as museum professionals to care for, store, and display these artifacts to the best of our abilities.
We got a head start in December by cataloging the artifacts in the exhibit hall. We will be done with that process, hopefully, by the end of the week. Then we will venture into our basement to catalog the many artifacts that we have there!
We are so thankful that we have the support of our community in doing this project!
I will be posting more blogs about our progress and special blogs about each curator's favorite find of the week!
---Jennifer
Assistant Curator
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