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Today being a stat holiday (and me being home enjoying the sunshine and fresh air) — means that we’re finished with all the big outreach events that have been going on this week.

Yesterday, nothing was planned except for tours, and we did indeed run those. Considerably more people turned up than had in the previous days. The main “what I learned” from yesterday thus was that scale is important, and that presenting the mini-exhibits to a group of 12 people is a lot harder than only 4 or 5 at once.

Haven’t got the official numbers yet, but it looks like there were close to 40 drop-ins yesterday, which is actually close to what I was expecting for the whole week. A few of those people also had their own particular research interests, that I was able to address. I know of at least 3 that are coming back next week to work. Another couple, based on what they read in the paper, brought in a family photograph and a story which augments one of the files we were discussing.

Part of me is thinking “this is what Archives is supposed to be” — at least, based on all available literature about outreach and engaging the public. This institution hasn’t had much opportunity to make that first step, in the past. There’s always a lot to do, of course, but for years and years it seems that getting control over the collections was the only priority.

I think that might be changing a bit. I’m glad to be involved in that.

Children!

And also, many many meetings.

And  drop-ins, which was neat, too. The press we had yesterday seems to have an impact — despite not starting the official tours until 1 today there were still more visitors than yesterday.

I’m a bit tired, though. There was a lot more running around — mostly in that I had to set up and take down one of the exhibits twice in order to make room for the meetings, and spent the extra time I had writing a press release for something unrelated.

The kids were great. They were pretty interested in all the old stuff, and were utterly thrilled by some things I wasn’t expecting: riding the freight elevator, wearing the white gloves, and using the microfilm machine. Though I suppose from the perspective of someone that young, microfilm is a weird, mysterious, antique technology. Same way I’d feel playing around with anything using punch cards.

Anyway, there’s one day left of all this madness, and it should be just regular tours with no extras.

As tired as I was by the end of today (also stayed 45 min late) I’m very, very pleased that we did this. It’s been great for the Archives, great for the public (I hope!) and a fantastic learning experience.

Fame!

Looks as though all the media contact yesterday paid off: last night the Archives tours were covered on the local news, and this morning we were also featured in the newspaper.

Of course, just for fun, it was the very same day that Thunder Bay made international news, and an excellent photograph of one of our staff was displayed on the front page right next to the “Runaway Pilot” headline. It was an interesting juxtaposition, I’d have to say.

The media coverage did us well: even though today’s tours were originally billed “for City staff” we had a number of members of the general public drop by — including one fellow who heard about this all on the classic rock station.

Aside from the increased numbers, today was pretty much the same. Tomorrow there will be children. I’ve also had to take down one of the exhibits to make room for a meeting tomorrow; I’ll then put it up again, then take it down again, then put it up again. (And I suppose take it down one final time once the week is finished.) There is something to be said for the simplicity of “lay it all out on a table.”

Got the mini-exhibits set up last week in a hurry, and began running the public tours today. So far those tours have included television, radio, and print media, a couple of “regular” researchers, a city councillor, and a single new member of the general public. A decent start, though. Later this week we have city staff, heritage committees, a Grade 5 class, and another day of “public.” By the end of it I’ll probably have some things memorized that I never expected to.

So what’s this table about, then? Turns out that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, stopped in Fort William one afternoon in 1914 and bought a piece of land on a whim. (It was an investment property — he was just that taken by the city’s potential. As far as I can tell he wasn’t in the habit of buying land in Canadian cities he’d never been to before.) The exhibit uses this property, and the famous name attached to it, to demonstrate the variety of resources that the Archives has for researching the history of land and buildings. People use these to find out who used to live in their houses. (Hint: not Sir Arthur.)

Incidentally, the place is now a bakery (and a pretty good one.)

We also have set up a display of maquettes of public art, a display of assorted visual materials (photos, maps, blueprints) and a couple of “strange but true” files (including one documenting the controversial move to accept Daylight Savings Time in painstaking detail.)

A full set of photographs can be found here, on my flickr account.

One of the challenges I encountered last week with the Time Capsule project was the small “collection” of stamps and coins. A set had been placed into the first capsule in 1903, and then again in 1966.

Which of course leaves me cursing the “archival” habits of the 1960s. The stamps were placed flat onto construction paper, contained in a plastic page protector. (Not great, but not as bad as it could have been.) The 1903 coins had been glued to a piece of paper (in 1966 I assume.) The 1966 coins were stuck on with double-sided tape. Lovely. The glue separated away pretty easily without damage or much residue, but the tape was still nastily sticky. I’m assured that this pretty much decimated the value to collectors.

(Not that it’s strictly ethical for me to be thinking in those terms, is it?)

The other thing that made this challenging was my total lack of knowledge of anything relating to stamps or coins. I wasn’t able to find much coverage in my usual sources for preservation and conservation information. Stamps, not mentioned at all; coins listed along with medals in one bulletin.

I’m certain that this is due to the monetization of stamp collecting and coin collecting — as these are two popular hobbies, the artefacts become the province of amateurs and collectors, and are not considered to be of nearly as much interest to archives or museums. (With exceptions of course, stamp museums and currency museums do exist. But I wasn’t able to find much information from them on what I should do.)

Sites directed towards collectors treat the issue very simply: don’t use bare fingers, use protective enclosures that one can buy at your local hobby shop. Not much technical there.

Having hit a dead end doing things the usual way, I followed the advice and headed off to the local hobby shop — and success! Not only did I get lots of very detailed information about history (and aforementioned values) of these very display-friendly objects, but I was also freely given the supplies needed to take care of them a little more properly this time.

I’d been expecting that the special status of these things as collector items, as objects with known monetary value, would make it more difficult for me to deal with them properly. Instead, in a situation where I was the amateur, I found it possible to take advantage of some wonderful expert advice.

The exhibit that I’ve been working on this week, and this week only, is now available for passersby to admire!

As you can imagine, I’m quite proud of this. Got the go-ahead to start work last Friday afternoon, and managed to get ready to set up the minute the replicas were back from the print shop.

I had a lot of help with this, of course, but in many ways I feel like it’s my project. My first real successful, completed project since finishing school.

There’s a companion web exhibit that is not yet done. I hope to get it finished early next week.

Lessons learned:

• Decide what you want in the display before arranging for reproductions.
• It’s possible to make things work on almost no budget if you have a really, really steady hand with scissors.
• Outsourcing is more expensive and takes more time. Do it yourself, or get a summer student.
• Everyone likes old stuff.
• When installing an exhibit in a display cabinet, don’t forget that you’ll also have to deal with the stuff that’s already in there.

I think this is about time for a long weekend, yes?

Continuing the saga of the exhibit I’ve had to put together in under a week:

The primary challenge today was setting up the display stands. We don’t exactly have budget or time to buy proper stands for materials, so I got to construct them myself out of used folders. Arts & crafts time!

As silly as that all sounds, it went pretty well. Three of us worked on it and got all 20-some finished in only a couple of hours. The stands are sturdy, and somehow manage to not look like they were made out of used folders in an afternoon. I’m actually quite proud of how it turned out.

If the printers pull through, we might be able to get it up “on time” tomorrow afternoon. The accompanying website still has at least a day’s work left.

I’ll certainly post more once the whole thing is finished.

Big Project of the week is a small exhibit I’m putting together ASAP of the items from the time capsule recently unearthed at City Hall. I’m almost afraid to admit it publicly, but this is my first time doing a physical exhibit. And it keeps getting more and more complicated.

The problem I’ve just encountered is the difficulty of creating useful reproductions that are good enough to be used in the exhibit. We’re worried about light damage, and that the exhibit location isn’t particularly secure, so I’ve been asked to use reproductions wherever possible.

However, an exhibit of crap pictures of cool things is still a crap exhibit.

The photographs are going to turn out pretty decently, I think. But a scan of a printed page, shot out of a colour printer, still looks like a scan of a printed page shot out of a colour printer. And no matter what that’s costing us it looks cheap to me.

Speaking of cheap, I am also building my own display stands out of old file folders, so I guess there you have it.