Examples and security
Hi Taryn,
You've made great headway at your wiki!
I just wanted to mention the possibility of using some real-life examples of museum archives. Perhaps you could focus on a particular geographic region or theme to narrow down the wealth of museum archives that could be discussed?
Also, I would think that security could be an issue for museum archives serving the public. Perhaps this area could be explored in your 'challenges' section of your article?
Chelsea
Hi Chelsea!
I will absolutely add some real-life examples of museum archives! I'll be looking at MOA (with some great feedback from Krisztina, the Archivist who did our presentation), as well as The Smithsonian Institute, and perhaps a few others! Unfortunately there's not a lot of literature out there about specifics, but I will try my best to look at museum websites and get some information from there!
I also thought the same, and actually had "Access and Security" as a section under challenges originally, however I've found that there is very little to nothing written about it, and most museum archives get around the access/security challenges by having appointment only hours to allow them access to the archives without having to pay the museum admission fee, etc. I will do some more poking around to see if I can find any further information, but according to the museum archivists I've spoken with, I've pretty much located all 10 resources about museum archives! Thanks for the feedback! Taryn
Hi Taryn, I think what you mention here (about appointment only hours) is a pretty good start to section on access and security. You might also want to draw on our visit to MOA for this -- thinking about the layout there and about Krisztina saying that she picked the location of her desk on purpose so that she could observe researchers... I'll let you know if I think of anything else on the topic!