It’s Friday, but it’s not the end of my work week. I have to go in tomorrow for a few hours to open up the museum for some tours that will be coming through. I really don’t mind. I’ve done tours for this particular group (there are different people each time, but they are on campus for the same reason), and it’s never bad. Tours only aggravate me when there is someone who has specific questions about weapons, engines, or other military minutiae that I don’t have an answer for. Usually, the person asking already has the answer and wants to show off how much they know. Usually, tours are very easy going.
I’ll also be giving a tour today, but I’ll have coworkers with me who can answer any difficult questions. I can tell stories about our artifacts all day long, but when it comes to specifications of a piece, I sometimes have issues. I’ve also never been good at remembering numbers, so that also makes those type of questions difficult.
Today is going to be another long Friday just like last Friday. At least I’ll get a good dinner at a nice restaurant tonight. I just hope I like the person I have to spend much of the day and evening with because I might have to deal with them a lot more in the future.
Anyway, that’s all the ramblings I have for today. I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
7 comments:
It's a shame you can't answer all the questions your guests have. Since you are the curator they expect you to know everything? Maybe you should create a "smart book" with all the details of the museum. That way you could look up the answers for every question and detail.
RB, as a general rule, I can answer most questions. It's the minor specifications questions that I have problems with remembering. In military history, we call people with this level of interest "rivet counters," as in they can tell you how many rivets are in a particular model of tank, etc. They want to know all the specs of a particular item. With over 20,000 objects and thousands of years of history in our collection, it is impossible for me to know every detail about everything. I do my best, and answer what questions I can.
Our database has detailed descriptions of all of our objects, though some records are not complete as they predate a formal/modern museum's cataloging standards. Now, if an item is in my education collection, i.e., items I curate for teaching purposes, then I can tell someone all of the specifications. I wish my brain had the capacity to hold all the knowledge to answer even the oddest most specific questions about every time in our collection, but sadly, I don't. I learned a long time ago as a teacher, we can't know all the answers, and the best response is, "I don't know the answer, but I can find out." When I am on a tight schedule for tours, finding that information is not something I can do in an instant. However, I will do my best to answer the question at another time. I usually hand the person one of my cards and tell them to contact me by email, and I'll get back to them as soon as possible.
And just a side not, I am not the curator of collections. The curator of collections is the person whose job it is to know most, if not all, of the information about the collection. As the curator of education, my job is to curate the classes and educational material outside of the exhibits. I can't tell you how much I wish I knew all the answers. I really do wish I did, and I do my best to learn as much as possible, but no one has all the answers, no matter what job we have.
Sorry if I went a little overboard in responding to your comment.
Joe, why don't you make your database available for self-service for consultation?
We do, uvdp. We don’t have all 20000 object in the database online, but we have most of them. I’m not sure why all of them are not available online for everyone to access, but that decision is out of my hands.
Joe me encantaría poder hacer uno de esos recorridos por el museo. Me imagino que es un gran museo con muchas cosas que ver.
Después me encantaría poder ver ese otro "museo" al aire libre que tienes en el Campus... Tu ya me entiendes.
¿Piensas que algún día podría ver ambos museos?
Ángel
Ángel, you are welcome to see the museums anytime you'd like to come to Vermont.
Joe si yo pudiera ahora mismo empezaria los trámites para el pasaporte... Tengo mucha gana de conocerte y de que me enseñes el interior del museo y también su exterior.... LOL
Ángel
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