Talk:Collections maintenance

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Structure

The first thing that stands out to me is that the introductory paragraph doesn’t do a good job of touching on the following paragraphs, so that when you get to the first substantive section, it feels abrupt. Some mention of environmental control, storage/upkeep, and adding in maintenance work/treatments in the intro paragraph would help alleviate this. Alternatively, a sentence at the beginning of each section discussing why controlling that section is a key aspect of collections maintenance might help the article flow better.

We could perhaps rename “Environmental Controls” to “Agents of Deterioration”, since the subsections list individual agents and discusses consequences of and ways to mitigate each. “Storage and Upkeep” could likely be broken apart into their own separate sections. The two aren’t inherently connected topics (cleaning of materials can happen in a disorganized space, and an organized space can still be filthy).

I would like to see additional information under Upkeep/Housekeeping that covers some of the preventative actions taken to help preserve and maintain objects and collections. As we learned in our Treatment module, preventative conservation sometimes calls for active measures, and it’s not all about maintaining the proper environment. The article currently includes dusting and general cleaning, but doesn’t include things such as proper housing, buffering, support, and monitoring schedules, amongst other things.

Do y’all think it’s worth including a section that goes into detail about proper care and maintenance for specific material types? Many of our references discuss collections care at the material/object type level, but I fear this would get too granular for a wikipedia article. Plus, there are likely other pages dedicated to the care of specific object types. That said, it might help in illustrating some of the points being made in other parts of the article. What do y’all think? 
Adding a section on inventorying might be worthwhile. It’s not a topic we’ve really addressed in this course, but it’s an important project for maintaining a collection in good order. It’s also incredibly informative about the current state of a collection’s organization, and it gives collections managers an opportunity to do a quick condition check on objects in the collection they might not otherwise have reason to check up on.

I’m excited to get started on improving and expanding this article with y’all! Sytrohs87 (talk) 23:41, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi JHU group! Those changes all sound great to me. I agree that the beginning paragraph of each subsection can use some more information and/or introductory transitions. I also think the subsections could all use some additional resources - including environmental control, RH, and organization - but we will definitely have plenty of those! The other sections that I thought could use some more information were temperature and organization.

I also wrote down a note about adding a section for prevention and/or treatment to the page. This is an important facet to mitigating damage, so I think it at least deserves its own subsection. What do you all think about adding a section for risk assessment and management as well?

I think it might be a good idea to touch on risk assessments within the proposed Agents of Deterioration section. Such assessments can help prioritize which agents are the biggest threat and direct maintenance efforts accordingly. We just need to make sure not to veer too far into disaster planning. That topic feels to me more like management rather than actual maintenance. Sytrohs87 (talk) 22:26, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

I think getting to far into the details of specific care for materials could be too much for this one article. I really like User:Yasminmohamed23's idea to create a table, so we can at least briefly touch on this subject, without having to add far too much information.

Oh, yeah, that sounds like a great idea! Nice thinking User:Yasminmohamed23. We should come up with a list of common materials then. Here's what I've got off the top of my head:

• Canvas Paintings
• Works on Paper
• Photographs
• Sculpture (stone, metal, plastics, mixed media, any others?)
• Decorative Arts

What others do y'all think we should add? Sytrohs87 (talk) 22:26, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

I think we could also add fabric/textiles, and also ceramics as their own category. That, to me, seems like a pretty good foundation of materials to base the table on. Arejayem (talk) 22:31, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

I took note of a few phrases in the article that I thought you could use internal wiki-links as well - humidifiers, dehumidifiers, pollutants, temperature.

Thanks, all! I'm looking forward to working with you to improve this page! Arejayem (talk) 16:14, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

References

Hi fellow JHU classmates! I've taken some time to go back through the discussion posts throughout this semester, and I've compiled a list of references suggested by us and our classmates related to our topic. They are as follows:

• Ashley-Smith, J. (2018). “The Ethics of Doing Nothing”. Journal of the Institute of Conservation v.41 no.1 pp.6-15. Retrieved 4/19/2021 from https://doi.org/10.1080/19455224.2017.1416650.
• Bandes, S. J. (1984). Caring for Collections: Strategies for Conservation, Maintenance, and Documentation: A Report on an American Association of Museums Project. American Association of Museums: Washington D.C.
• Buck, R. & J. Gilmore. (2010). Museum Registration Methods. 5th edition. American Alliance of Museums Press: Washington, D.C.
• Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI). (2018a). “Care of Objects and Collections”. Canadian Conservation Institute. Website & sub-pages. Accessed 4/19/2021 from https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/care-objects.html.
• Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI). (2018b). “Preventative Conservation and Risk Management”. Canadian Conservation Institute. Website & sub-pages. Accessed 4/19/2021 from https://www.canada.ca/en/services/culture/history-heritage/museology-conservation/preservation-conservation/preventive-conservation.html.
• Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA). (n.d.). “A Preventative Conservation Primer”. Fact Sheet. Accessed 4/19/2021 from https://ccaha.org/sites/default/files/attachments/2018-06/Preventive%20Conservation%20Primer.pdf.
• Henry, M. C. (2013). “Conservation Environments, Museum Buildings, and Sustainability”. Summit on the Museum Preservation Environment pp.20-24. Smithsonian Institution. Accessed 4/19/2021 from https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/34611/13.03.EnvironPreservationSummit.Final.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
• Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MFA). (2021). “Conservation and Collections Management”. Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Website. Accessed 4/19/2021 from https://www.mfa.org/collections/conservation-and-collections-management.
• National Park Service (NPS). (2019). Museum Handbook, Part I: Museum Collections. Accessed 4/19/2021 from https://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/MHI/mushbkI.html.
• The National Trust. (2006). Manual of Housekeeping: The Care of Collections in Historic Houses Open to the Public. Elsevier: Boston, MA.
• Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC). (n.d.). “Section 3: Caring for Collections”. Preservation 101. Website. Accessed 4/19/2021 from https://www.nedcc.org/preservation101/session-3/3collection-maintenance#:~:text=Collection%20maintenance%20refers%20to%20the,somewhat%20from%20institution%20to%20institution.
• Pedersoli, J.L., Antomarchi, C. & Michalski, S. (2016). "A Guide to Risk Management of Cultural Heritage". International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property & Canadian Conservation Institute. Retrieved 4/19/2021 from https://www.iccrom.org/sites/default/files/2017-12/risk_management_guide_english_web.pdf.
• Querner, P. (2015). “Insect Pests and Integrated Pest Management in Museums, Libraries and Historic Buildings”. Insects v.6 no.2 pp.595-607. Retrieved 4/19/2021 from https://doi.org/10.3390/insects6020595.
• Raikes, S. (1996). “Is Collection Management an ‘Art' or a ‘Science’?”. Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies, 1, pp.16–20. Accessed 4/19/2021 from http://doi.org/10.5334/jcms.1964
• Shelley, M. (2019). The Care and Handling of Art Objects: Practices in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Met Publications. Retrieved 4/19/2021 from https://resources.metmuseum.org/resources/metpublications/pdf/The_Care_and_Handling_of_Art_Objects_Practices_in_The_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art_2019.pdf.
• Thomson, G. (1986). The Museum Environment. Butterworth-Heinemann: London, U.K. Accessed 4/19/2021 from https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=KvcbBQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=pollutants+in+museum+environment&ots=9X1zzmm-SH&sig=YhSYP5lmwuHZ17POj_dbY09vJiE#v=onepage&q&f=false.

I think these will provide us an excellent starting point for doing some additional research and adding references to existing information. Many of them apply to multiple topics on our page, so I haven't gone through and delineated which would be best suited for each section. Let me know what y'all think! Sytrohs87 (talk) 23:08, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Regarding the quality of existing references, I see that both the NPS handbook and the National Trust Manual of Housekeeping are listed as references already. Those will definitely be good to retain, although they lean very heavily on these two sources. It will be good for us to add in the variety of sources we’ve found throughout the semester. I haven’t heard of Conservation Concerns, and without a link to the work, it’s hard to verify the quality of the publication, but since it’s published by Smithsonian books, I’m inclined to say it’s worth keeping in. I also hadn’t heard of The Winterthur Guide to Caring for Your Collections, but Winterthur’s reputation in the conservation field is reason alone to retain this reference. All in all, I don’t see a single questionable reference in the current article, which is pretty amazing if you ask me! Sytrohs87 (talk) 23:21, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for listing all those out! I had saved the recommendations from my posts throughout the semester, but it will be really helpful to have those all together. Thanks, User:Sytrohs87!

I also took some time yesterday and combed through our assigned readings throughout the semester and pulled a list of ones that should be helpful to our article as well. I've listed the links below.

• C. Caple - Conservation: Concepts & Reality

• E. Avrami, et al. - Values and Heritage Conservation

• M. Corfield - Conservation Documentation

• G.A. Gates - Discovering the material secrets of art: Tools of cultural heritage science

• J. Ashley-Smith - Risk Assessment for Object Conservation

• G. Thomson - Future Trends in Environmental Control

I think between all the references we've listed, we've got a good start to adding to this article! Arejayem (talk) 16:38, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Missing Information/Updated/Detailed Information

Hey fellow JHU groupmates!

I agree with the two posts above! I think we could include sections on the other agents of deterioration (not just the environmental ones) as they relate to collections maintenance. I found some great resources pertaining to the cleaning/maintenance of specific materials with a rough timeline of how often things should be done. I think a simple table with some common objects could work really well in the Upkeep Section. Considering collections maintenance is something that is done continuously and on a rolling basis, having a rough timeline would put things in perspective and allow for a link to a resource for more details. Case studies and examples (I think, personally) always enhance a Wikipedia page and allow people who browse to have some idea of the knowledge applied into real circumstances, and I've found a few possible things to input for that. In the intro paragraph, where they discuss who would be undertaking this task, it might be worth it to mention that in smaller institutions, various other roles might be responsible for collections maintenance, possible curators, volunteers, etc. MRM5 and AAM resources are missing from the Wikipedia page, and I've also done some research on my own with more resources and links. https://www.nps.gov/klse/learn/management/upload/MuseumManagePlan-2010.pdf

https://ccaha.org/resources/collection-housekeeping-guide

https://sandiegoarchaeology.org/from-inside-the-vaults-museum-housekeeping-and-gallery-maintenance/

https://www.gallerysystems.com/best-practices-for-collections-documentation-and-object-cataloguing/

https://philamuseum.org/conservation/10.html?page=2 Thanks everyone, looking forward to working on this! Yasminmohamed23 (talk) 14:52, 20 April 2021 (UTC)