Inventory

Erica and I spent most of today working on the HRC’s yearly inventory. The museum has to complete two inventories each year. One is a controlled property inventory of objects worth over $2,000 and the other is a random sample of objects in the museum collection, regardless of value. Erica and I were responsible for the random sample inventory.

There were over two hundred items on the inventory, so it took quite some time to complete the inventory. Basically, we had to locate each object in storage, determine if it was where it said it was located in ANCS+ and indicate whether or not it was damaged. Most objects were easy to find, but the HRC has some recurring problems with inventory because of a lack of museum training and care by previous museum staff.

To explain the complex problem, the previous staff set aside catalog numbers in blocks to assign to objects according to their topic, rather than assigning them in numerical order as they were needed. Because of this, many of the numbers originally set aside are not yet assigned to objects. For inventory, ANCS+ creates a random sample of 200 plus objects. Many of these are catalog numbers that come up on the inventory are those that were set aside but not assigned to objects. Further, these numbers are not even entered into the database, so we have to look them up in handwritten catalog books, many of which are out of numerical order and are accompanied by cryptic notes. Needless to say, this is a big mess, one which the registrar Bridgette is constantly dealing with. Her goal at the HRC is to reassign all the blocks of numbers that were set aside years ago but are not in use. Bridgette tells us that this is why registrars need to be meticulous, detail oriented people so that messes like this aren’t made for others to fix.

Despite these issues, I enjoyed doing inventory because it was fun to see all the objects we had to find. I really liked looking at the photos and postcards we had to find.

Late in the afternoon, we went to see and inventory the vehicle storage in Gardiner. The HRC is not big enough to house all the historic vehicles, so they are stored off site at the transportation building.  The vehicle collection encompasses an entire warehouse and includes a great variety of objects from Yellowstone's history. They have everything from cars, trucks, carriages, the park's famous yellow buses, snowmobiles, and mopeds.           

Cataloging Textiles

Today I cataloged and housed articles of clothing for the first time. The two pieces I cataloged were a jacket and a snowsuit belonging to a former park geologist. To get information about the articles of clothing for ANCS+, I looked in the accession file for details about their significance. There, I found a few notes about each piece, which I included in their catalog records.

To label the clothing, I wrote their catalog numbers with acid free pen on twine tape, which I sewed onto the tags of each. I made cushioned hangers to store them by wrapping coat hangers with batting. Then, I hand sewed muslin cloth over the batting in the shape of the hangers. When the hangers were finished, I was ready to hang the two pieces in hanging textile storage cabinets.

One of the pieces I cataloged and housed

Sewn-on label

Coat hanger wrapped in batting

Finished coat hanger with batting and muslin

Today I also finished the metal rehousing project. I had finished putting all the objects in the collection with tarnish into corrosion intercept bags last week. I changed the location of each object in the database and put them away in their new storage location. Because the corrosion intercept bags turn black when they need to be changed, I made signs for the outside of the boxes that explained what was stored inside and that the bags need to be checked every six months to make sure they are still working. I also put notes to that effect in ANCS+ for each object .

Rehoused metal objects in their new location

Signs on the outside reminding that the corrosion intercept bags need to be checked

For the remainder of the day, I read about the 1999 buffalo walk performed by Native Americans. The walkers traveled 507 miles from South Dakota all the way to  the Roosevelt Arch in Gardiner for a ceremony to protest the park’s bison management plan. I started reading a binder prepared about the ceremony that included interviews, articles, and park documents that tried to give the full picture of this complex issue. I will discuss this issue in more detail in a later post.

Short Day at the Office

This morning, I worked on various smaller projects until the tour at 10 AM. My boyfriend, Colin, is up for a visit, so he came to the tour of the facility to see what I have been up to this summer. He had told me he was interested in seeing some older objects from the hotels, so I pulled some old dishware from the Mammoth Hotel to point out on the tour. After the tour, I showed Colin the historic furniture collection, which we do not bring the tour groups to see. He really enjoyed the behind the scenes look at a neat part of the HRC collection. I think he especially appreciated it because he (and I) used to work in an historic hotel in Glacier National Park, so it was interesting to see the history of similar hotels here in Yellowstone. Afterwards, Colleen was nice enough to let me out of work an hour early at noon (I took comp time and had planned on leaving at 1) so I could show Colin more of the park.

A Very Busy Day at the HRC

This morning, a very large group came to the HRC for a tour of the facility. Because the group was so big, we had to split them into two smaller groups and bring them through the museum separately. Alicia gave the tour, but asked that the seasonals and interns join the group to make sure no one touched anything or wandered away from the tour into the other areas of storage. Unlike many tour groups we have had, this group was very inquisitive and that made the tour take much longer than usual. By the time both groups had toured the museum, half the morning was over!

After the tour and into the afternoon, I catalogued four hand-tinted and two black and white Haynes large format panoramic prints. Describing all six landscape scenes in the database was tedious, but the prints themselves were really neat. Hand-tinting was a popular process before the advent of color processing, and the result looks a lot like watercolors.

One of the black and white Haynes Prints

One of the hand-tinted Haynes prints

I housed the prints in large acid free map folders, which I labeled on the outside corner and placed in a map drawer for storage. One of the two black and white prints were scenes of Mammoth at the turn of the century. I was able to date the print because of context clues within the picture. Basically, I looked at the buildings in the print and then looked up the dates that they were built and torn down when applicable. This allowed me to narrow down the date the picture was taken to a narrow range of years.

I used a similar process for the other black and white photo of the Old Faithful Inn. The inn has changed over the years due to additions and renovations. One of the most noticeable changes is the number of finials (flagpoles) on top of the inn. When it was built, there were eight finials, but today there are only four remaining because of structural changes to the hotel. In the photo, there were eight finials, so I was able to determine that the photo was taken before the first renovation. I think it’s really fun to find the clues within the objects to date them!

Because me and Bridgette have the same birthday, we all went out to lunch on Wednesday to celebrate. Colleen was nice enough to treat me and Bridgette and it was fun to hang out with the library and archives people during the workday (usually, we don’t see each other because we work on different floors).

Then, I continued working on the metal rehousing project for the rest of the afternoon. I finished putting all the pieces into corrosion intercept bags, labeling the bags, and putting them into boxes. All I have left to do is change the location of all the objects in ANCS+ and put the boxes into upright shelving. 

Curatorial Park Tour

Today was an amazing day! Colleen, the museum curator, took all of the interns and museum techs on a curatorial tour of Yellowstone. We started in Mammoth at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, where Colleen discussed the other hotels that had been located on and near the site of the current hotel. She also discussed some preservation issues that the museum and park must deal with. The first has to do with the park's historic furniture, much of which is in use in the hotels. This constant use of cataloged museum collections brings about several preservation and other issues. For example, the furniture is constantly moved by the hotel, which makes it hard to keep track of. 

The concessionaire, Xanterra, also runs a wood shop where they are constantly repairing, reupholstering, and repainting the furniture. The repainting especially caused problems in the past, because the museum's catalog numbers were being covered up with paint, making them impossible to keep track of. Xanterra and the museum came up with a solution - they put electronic chips in the furniture so they can be scanned during inventory. 

Another issue is one of light - the hotels have lots of windows and that means lots of sunlight, which has damaged a considerable number of irreplaceable objects. One example is a wooden map designed by Robert Reamer, an architect who designed many of the hotels in the park. The map now hangs in the Mammoth Hot Springs hotel. It has considerable sun damage, and has faded a great deal over the years. 

Our next stop was the Museum of the National Park Ranger in Norris. The museum is quite small and is located in an old Army building. The exhibits document the roles of park rangers over the years and the museum is staffed by volunteer park rangers who have retired. Colleen explained that the HRC has to take all the objects out the museum for the winters because the museum has a mouse and bug problem that they do not want to compromise the objects.   

After leaving the Museum of the National Park Ranger, we went to the site of a hotel that was built in Norris, but burned down before it ever opened when someone started a fire in an unfinished fireplace. We were able to see where a chimney once stood and there were ceramic sherds scattered around the site. Colleen showed us a picture of the hotel before it burned down.

The fireplace of the ill-fated hotel in Norris

From there, we headed to the Norris Museum in the Norris Geyser Basin. Interestingly, this museum was built with funding by one of the Rockefellers to the American Association of Museums, who used the money to build this and three other rustic museums in Yellowstone in the 1930's. This museum has exhibits on the geothermic features in the park.

Norris Museum

From Norris, we went to the Fishing Bridge Museum, in the Yellowstone Lake area. This museum was built with the same funding as the Norris Museum, and the exhibits focus on lake ecology. I had already been to this museum to fix the bird exhibits (see post from June 12). Colleen explained that this museum looks almost exactly as it did when it was built, with the same exhibits and same cases. 

Fishing Bridge Museum

Exhibits in Fishing Bridge Museum

From Fishing Bridge, we went to the Lake Hotel, the oldest hotel in the park. After having lunch in the dining room (which was awesome!) Colleen described the history of the hotel and its changes over the years. She showed us historic photos and also showed us how they use the scanner to inventory the furniture with the embedded computer chips, which was really interesting. Outside the hotel, Colleen pointed out a yellow bus, a historic vehicle that was tracked down after being sold, restored, and is now used as it once was - as a tour bus. The HRC has three of these yellow buses in its collection, and eight others are used by Xanterra for tours.

Lake Hotel

Sunroom of Lake Hotel

Yellow Bus

Our last stop was the Old Faithful Inn, where we learned the history of the Inn, got ice cream, and watched Old Faithful erupt. From there, we headed back to Mammoth having learned much more about the park and its history than when we started. 

Old Faithful from the deck of Old Faithful Inn

Upcoming Projects and Furniture Cataloging

First thing this morning I pulled some historic park uniforms, hats, and a saddle from storage for Colleen, the museum curator. Someone came in later in the morning to look at the objects, which belonged to their grandfather when they worked at the park early in the twentieth century. After that, I worked on rehousing for the remainder of the morning and into the afternoon. 

Around lunchtime, Bridgette and I discussed some upcoming cataloging work I will be doing on some ethnographic materials. The objects I will be cataloging were used by Native Americans in ceremonies related to the buffalo management strategy and recent wolf integration, both of which have been very controversial. In order to catalog these materials, I will need to research these issues in detail in order to give them context in the database. Luckily, the HRC has a large binder full of information, documentation, and articles related to these events and ceremonies. However, ethnographic materials often come with stipulations - some objects cannot be handled by women and others can not be associated with certain colors to give two examples. Part of my research will include figuring out whether I am able to handle these objects at all, as the museum takes its responsibility to respect Native traditions very seriously. I am looking forward to researching and learning more about these objects and these ceremonies to the extent that I will be allowed to do so. 

In the afternoon, I worked on cataloging some historic hotel furniture. First, I cataloged a bench from the Old Faithful Inn. Housing this piece was easy because it was already where it belonged in storage, so all I needed to do was tag it with the catalog number. I had trouble figuring out when this bench was made, but Bridgette was able to help me figure that out. These benches are still used in Old Faithful on the observation deck, where visitors sit to watch Old Faithful Geyser erupt. 

Old Faithful Inn bench

After cataloging the Old Faithful bench, I cataloged a bench from the Canyon Hotel, which no longer stands after burning down in the late 1950's. The enormous hotel was slated to be demolished because it was sliding down a hill, but it mysteriously burned down before that could happen. This bench was donated as part of the Davis collection, a huge 3/4 purchase and 1/4 donation of historic Yellowstone objects. The purchase was made possible by the Yellowstone Association and the remainder of the objects in the collection were donated by the Davis family. 

According to the object paperwork, this bench was used in the Canyon Hotel in the mid-1930's. Bridgette showed me a great way to research the dates furniture was used in the park hotels over the years: the museum has scanned photographs of the interiors of the hotels over the years. By looking through the scanned pictures, the museum has been able to date much of their historic furniture collection. 

Canyon Hotel Bench

Rehousing all day

This morning, I worked on rehousing a bunch of small objects. I learned a lot from rehousing three souvenir makeup compacts. One of the compacts still had a powder puff inside, which was filthy from powder. I used a vacuum to suck up excess powder from inside the compact while I gently loosened the powder with a brush. I removed the powder puff from the inside and housed it in a small ziploc baggie, into which I placed a piece of acid free paper with the catalog number. 

Another one of the compacts had a small compartment that still contained what appeared to be either bright red lipstick or rouge. Bridgette and I weighed the pros and cons of leaving the makeup or removing it from the compact. Pros of leaving the makeup: it makes the compact more interesting and it doesn't seem to be damaging the compact (yet). Disadvantage of leaving the makeup: it could damage the metal in the compact. 

The compact with the makeup inside

Bridgette suggested I consult Colleen, the curator, about what to do. She said I should remove the makeup by scraping the bulk of it with a special tool and then rubbing the rest out with a q-tip. This suggestion worked really well, and soon the makeup was removed. As I removed the makeup, I discovered writing underneath, which read "For a refill, send 25 cents to Elmira, 2355 Fifth Ave., New York City." We all thought that was a pretty interesting discovery. 

The newly clean compact

The writing underneath the makeup

I rehoused the cleaned compacts in a custom made rectangular box lined with a thin sheet of ethafoam. Into another sheet of ethafoam, I cut out the shapes of the compacts so they would not shift when storage drawers open and close. 

The newly housed compacts

I was also given several pieces of silver to rehouse. Because they were very tarnished, I decided to house them in special bags that prevent further tarnishing. I knew that we have several pieces of silver in the collection which would be well served by these special bags. I decided to rehouse them all into Hollinger boxes in upright shelving, a better location for them once they were in the bags. The regular storage areas are visual storage - the bags prevent the objects from being seen, so placing them in upright storage is a better use of the space. I made a floating tray for a Hollinger box and began housing the silver in the special bags. I tied a tag around each bag with the catalog number on it so that the bags would not need to be opened to identify each object. I placed the bigger pieces on the bottom of the box and the smaller ones in the floating tray. I still need to pull a lot of pieces from storage and rehouse them in this way, but the following pictures show what I have done so far:

Some of the tarnished silver I rehoused

The bottom of the box holding larger objects

The floating tray holding smaller pieces