Tuesday, September 11, 2007

No Butterflies, Another Topic!!!!

I know, I know - the butterfly posts were excessive - obsessive, even - so no more for awhile (though I DID see a Polings Hairstreak today!)

So I want to write a bit about something that I get asked about quite a bit. My official Department of the Army job title is "museum specialist," but in the museum world at large, I am what is called the Registrar, another name for the Collections Manager. More about that in a minute, but I am also lucky in that I get to do a broad range of things, including archive work, conservation, curation - really a mixed bag of jobs. But on to the Registrar.

As the Registrar, it is my job to accept and catalog donations. Sounds easy, right? Well, sometimes it's quite simple, other times - not so much. Two examples should suffice.

We recently had the president of the White Sands Club come to us, wanting to donate all of the scrapbooks in their possession to the museum. These 40 books trace the history of the White Sands Officers Wives Club, the White Sands Wives Club, and the White Sands Enlisted Wives Club, going back to the early 1950's. Really interesting, and important, because, while we have a lot of materials dealing with the military and testing at White Sands, materials relating to the social history of the range, such as what the military and their families did off-duty, is difficult to come by. This is an easy collection - it relates to our storyline and is obviously WSMR-related.

Thursday morning I will be picking up quite a different collection here in Las Cruces. The daughter of a rocket scientist (yes, they really exist!) is donating her father's materials - boxes of stuff. Her father worked on the Apollo and Saturn programs for NASA, in addition to working as an engineer on early Space Shuttle development. Oh yeah, and he worked with and for Dr. Werner von Braun - an icon of rocketry and one of the German Paperclip Scientists who came over after the Second World War. So how does this relate to White Sands? I don't really know yet, as I have not seen the collection. My job will be to take the donation, go through it all, determine what should be housed in our archive, and what should be sent to the archive at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, where her father actually spent his career.

Two very different collections, and two very different ways to accession and process them. I also get asked, a lot more than I expected, what a typical day for me is. Well, the typical day is atypical - never the same! Which, when you really think about it, is not a bad job to have.

Upon arriving at 0700, I usually get the lights on - open the museum - then sit down with my boss and just visit for an hour. I might then take a walk around Missile Park or the Nature Trail. If a group is coming in, I might have to lead a tour, or just talk to visitors. Being an Army museum, there is always training - safety, health, anti-terrorism - all things that most museums don't really have to deal with. I might call in work orders for things that aren't quite right in the museum - leaking roofs, pests, that sort of thing. I might have to accept a donation of photographs or oscilloscopes, magazines and books or warheads! The other day, the Director and I rearranged the artifacts in storage. During a recent 100% inventory, we realized the artifacts were stored in no logical fashion, and fixed it!

Then there are the inquiries - email, snail mail or in person. "Did Clyde Tombaugh really work out here?", "Did the Army really fire a rocket into Juarez, Mexico?", "Does the Navy really have a ship in the desert?" Yes, to all (well, sort of!) You get the idea.

Each day is different and unique - that's what makes the job so enjoyable. Plus, I get to spend my lunch hours hiking in the desert. I think I'll stay awhile!

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