EXPLORING THE MUSEUM ARCHIVES: THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF
NATURAL HISTORY’S CONTRIBUTION TO NATIONAL ARCHIVES WEEK
Once upon a time, when Gerald Ford was
president, I had a grant to be Assistant Archivist at Columbia University
Teacher’s College Archives. Many years later, I was told the archives had
closed. By then my career moved on to law librarianship. But that’s another
story. I’m always glad to visit archives whenever I get a chance.
The American Museum of Natural History was
founded in 1869. Theodore Roosevelt’s father was president of the Board of
Trustees. The Museum’s purpose is to
provide scientific education and research. On Sunday, October 5, 2014, the
American Museum of Natural History Library explained some of its archival
holdings as part of National Archives Week.
Having completed a project for the New York
City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reporting on best standards and
practices for long term digital objects, I was eager to find out how the AMNH
was approaching this problem, Vicky Steeves, a fellow from the National Digital
Stewardship Registry has a grant funded by the Library of Congress to develop a
preservation plan for the scientific papers with input from the
scientists. Vicky is applying a three pronged
approach: following trends in technology; using interoperative file formats and
migration to newer formats when required. This is what I learned from my
project. AMNH is keeping the original material.
Next I spoke to Barbara Rhodes, the Library Conservator,
whose purpose is to repair and restore materials as well as preserve them for
research and display purposes. One thing she does is make photocopy facsimiles of
materials that are displayed. Barbara had some examples. I particularly liked a
facsimile of a work by Anton von Leeuwenhoek, inventor of the microscope (www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/leeuwenhoek.html ) she photocopied the
original work on handmade paper and then bound it into a book. Except for the
binding, it gave a good impression of a 17th Century work.
Stacy Schiff, the Visual Resources Librarian,
explained how they plan to eventually provide online access to the Library’s
one million photographic images. These include glass plates and lantern slides.
Sometimes the museum gives lectures using the lantern slides.
Right now the photographic
materials are arranged by size. So there can be all sorts of material in one
box. So far the Digital Special Collections (images.library.amnh.org/digital) has curate 8500
items by topic and format. Stacy explained that there were three stages to
loading an image onto the database: scanning the image; standardizing the data
and adding the cultural context. For that purpose, Library applies Encoded
Archival Description (EAD) and Encoded Archival Context (EAC) for
metadata. The website’s platform uses
Omeka open source software. As a former cataloger, I was interested to learn
that the material was described using Library of Congress subject headings, the
Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/tgn/index.html
)
and
a local controlled vocabulary.
Thomas (Tom) Baione, the Library Director,
presided over the Expeditions Table which displayed artifacts from Franz Boas’ ‘(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/70705/Franz-Boas) photo scrapbook form
Jessup North Pacific Expedition to Northwest Coast of North America and
Siberia. Also displayed was a sweater worn
On the Central Asiatic Expedition to China
and Mongolia lead by Roy Chapman Andrew (www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/24006). It was a little
ragged and still had sand from the Gobi Desert. This expedition found a full
set of dinosaur eggs. Later on, in the film preservation section, I saw a film
of this discovery. Alas, it turned out the discovery of the eggs was staged or
“reenacted” as we now say in documentary film and television.
Also
on display was a beautifully stuffed canary that looked ready to fly away
except it was in a glass case. Twelve year old Carl Akeley, of the Museum’s
Akeley Hall of African Mammals, was the soon to be revolutionary taxidermist.
Akeley was also involved with the Field Museum in Chicago (http://www.fieldmuseum.org/carl-akeley). The film
preservation section also had film of a camp of one of Akeley’s many
expeditions to Africa. You see an African man ironing a table cloth. The
expedition members sit down at a table and are served by other men. Along comes
Akeley whose chair looked like a throne to me.
Barbara Mathe, Museum Archivist and Head of
Special Collections, showed us a scrapbook of photos of Native Americans. In
one photo, you can see the photographer in the subject’s eye. Barbara told us
that, in discussions with the Zuni, they were told certain photos could not be
displayed or otherwise observed as they were taken at a secret ceremony. Even
other Zuni may not look at these photos. It’s a good example of how the Museum
is sensitive to the people they study.
Then it was on to the film preservation
section where Gregory Rami, Special Collections Librarian, explained how they
preserved films and then digitizing them. I believe he said it was in the
1980’s they copied the films onto video tape in a format that was obsolete
before the invention of the DVD. This is a good example of the difficulty in
preserving archival film.
It’s
very expensive to digitize from film. It would cost about $16,000.00 to
digitize the 1920’s 10 minute films Gregory showed. So digital copies are made
from the tape copies played on the obsolete machines. I watched the films with
my niece Brynn (soon to be a student at Pratt Library School). We both
pronounced them “cool”. The Museum is still sponsoring expeditions which are
recorded digitally.
My final stop was the Hidden Collections Table.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Council for Library
and Information Resources (CLIR) are funding an inventory and description of
all the archives in the Museum Library and Scientific Departments. Becca Morgan
is the Project Archivist. Metadata Analyst Iris Lee has what I consider a
really fun job. She visits all the departments, talks to scientists, and
discovers connections that no one knew existed.
When I was a child, it was a real treat to
come to the American Museum of Natural History to see the dinosaur bones. The
planetarium was also fun. I am an adult. I know that there is an overwhelming
and ongoing amount of treasure in the Museum
It was real treat to learn about what is being done to catalog and
preserve it.
The Research Library (library.amnh.org) is open to the
public Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 2:00-5:30 and by appointment. Email libref@amnh.org or phone
212-769-5400.
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