Duane Hicks
There’s no shortage of interesting artifacts at the Fort Frances Museum.
But with so many items, and more donated by the public all the time, the problem is keeping track of what’s where.
Bethany Waite is the solution.
The new collections management co-ordinator recently started at the local museum and has a considerable task ahead of her over the next year: to organize the artifacts stored in the lower level.
“What I’ve been doing is entering locations for the artifacts and establishing an organizational system, labelling the shelves so that anyone else who comes here after can easily find things, compared to what I’ve been told they’ve been doing until now, which is digging through boxes until you find what you need,” noted Waite.
She said putting such a system in place will be beneficial in more ways than one.
“It helps the artifacts themselves because it means they’re handled less,” she remarked.
For instance, Waite said if you type “dress” into the museum’s database, it will tell you the style, colour, or period that you’re looking for and where it’s stored, rather than going through all of the clothing boxes and hoping the dress you’re looking for is in there.
“And then it will help the staff because they are not spending all of their time going through boxes,” added Waite.
As well, any future employees who come along, whether they be summer students or more contract positions, can find where things are without relying on museum curator Sherry George to tell them.
Waite said she’s started with organizing textiles, and has found it satisfying to re-associate artifacts that have been put in separate boxes.
For example, she has gathered all five parts of a vintage tuxedo—pants, cummerbund, jacket, vest, and bowtie—which were stored in different spots and now is back together again and ready for display.
Waite, whose job is a one-year position funded through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp., originally hails from Belleville, Ont.
She attended Trent University in Peterborough, where she did her undergrad in environmental science.
She then got her diploma in museum management and curatorship at Fleming College in Peterborough—a program that included an internship at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa.
Waite said she is looking forward to delving into the artifacts at the local museum.
“I’m excited to explore the collection here more,” she enthused.
“Now that I’m done the textiles, I’m doing some of the personal artifacts and those have been interesting.”
Waite said she has a particular interest in getting to agriculture and forestry artifacts, which tie into her environmental science background.
George called Waite an invaluable addition to the museum staff.
“It’s really great for us,” she stressed. “The collection needs to be cared for.
“There are pieces we need to be sure are stored properly, and labelled properly and numbered.”
As it stands now, George said it’s not always easy to find artifacts in the museum’s lower level, where they are stored.
“I have a general idea—‘Okay, fabrics are here but what box is it in?’” she explained.
“Everything is wrapped and put in a box, but where is it?” George said. “Things are wrapped and put on shelves, but which shelf is it on?
“On the top shelf or over there?
“That’s the big thing—to have our records actually state that this piece is on this shelf in this box,” she remarked.
“That will be huge for us.”
George said the museum has an accessioning backlog (accessioning is the process of identifying and cataloging new artifacts for the museum’s collection).
She noted the museum got a new database in the past couple of years, which includes all of the museum’s collection up to a point. But while the database was being built, new items would come in.
“We didn’t want to put anything new in until we had that new database,” George explained.
“Now that we have the database, we can start taking those pieces and adding them.
“But again it takes man hours,” she reiterated. “For every piece that is new to the museum, it take two hours, approximately, to put that piece into the collection.”
George said the mill exhibit staged by the museum last year resulted in the donation of thousands of photographs, artifacts, and documents in 20-30 boxes.
“How do we accession that when you think it’s a couple hours per piece?” she mused.
“There’s some things we are going to accession as a group, but you can’t accession everything like that.
“We’ve had some amazing pieces that have been donated in the last few years but they’re sitting in boxes,” George added.
“It would be nice to accession them properly, and make sure they’re properly wrapped and stored.”
George said it’s a relief to know that with Waite on board, more of the museum’s artifacts will dealt with and added to the collection properly.
