As our regular reader knows, the Society has long used card catalogs, like the one below, to organize and archive our collections information.
All together the Society has four sets of cards, totaling 22 boxes. Since we have 15,159 three dimensional objects (many of which have from one to four cards) there are literally thousands of index cards. We’ve spent the last month and half combining the four sets, culling duplicates, and archiving the remaining cards. It’s a lot of cards but it’s also a lot of valuable information for the data entry project.
However, not every card has valuable information. Some left us with more questions than answers (which happens when lots of people work on the same project over a long period of time without a how-to manual) and some have been downright amusing. Here is an assortment of some of the more interesting cards we found so far:
Who is Jane and what doesn’t she know?
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Must have been a shallow bowl.
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A nightdress: outerwear or underwear?
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A child’s old lady bonnet?
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Sometimes the cards aren’t all that helpful.
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And sometimes they offer “helpful” advice (we did find the card by the way, and it was more useful than this one).
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When did it change from being a portrait, to a painting, and back to a portrait again?
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Was it a fresh witch or can you use dried?
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There have been days when we knew when to walk away and knew when to run.
Tags: collections, IMLS, Museums for America