History of the Catalog
Consecutive Stages of Organization; Overview
The Organization of objects is the first obligation of the curator. Let it be said, right away, that this obligation is a light one for the great majority of curators or collectors; as such professionals are chosen, not for their abilities in weathering storms of paperwork, funding applications, and the vicissitudes of academic politics, but for their sincere love of taxonomic arcana.
For them, the categorization of objects based on superficial characteristics is a pleasure seldom equaled in any other aspect of their lives. They are transported to a dreamy netherworld when organizing—indeed creating—boundaries between Kingdom and Phyla, between Specie and Subspecie.
Here we record patinas and “agitated surface textures.” Morphology and Distribution deal with whether an item is “flocked” or covered with an artificial copper verdigris.
Classification by structure is classification by the exterior. However, the inner life of these objects has also been in the forefront of the curators’ thoughts for many weeks, even months. This is not simply an interest in molecular structure, but a sincere interest in the collective un-conscious; but here we run the risk of veering into the realm of another entire discipline, psychology.
Digital Resources
In 1992, the varied holdings from the Museum were assembled in index cards and odd peices of notebook paper. As early as 1994 a word-processing file was assembled for the description and organization of loaned, and permanent collection, items. This file was transferred to a data-base file. Yet, both of these forays into digital collections management were dependent upon proprietary software. Open-source code was utilized as soon as practicable and was found to be an ideal solution for a small, alternative, "close to the ground" repository. With technological assistance of Dennis Grady we started building a wiki. Matt Bucy's advice and help was also applied, once again, to help the Museum enter this new frontier of information sharing. The Main Street Museum fully embraced Wikicode. Our Catawiki was integrated with our traditional, html-based, web-site, and, alongside the storage and orgaization of archives and artifact records, enables additions, modifictation, discussions (discursions) and the release of both official and unofficial news and information in an easy-to-use, digital conversation with the public, from any internet access point.
We couldnt have done it without Invisible Image, Tiptop media and, of course, Wikimedia.
The volunteerism inherent in the Museum's operation appreciated the lateral, rather than the hierarchic structure. The board appreciated the obstensibly cost-free nature of the new technology. The flexibility of our platform would have made it invaluable to us, even if it wasn't open source code!
Our First Page
Our initial wiki page was created by Matt Bucy in 2007. Its called Hum. Even though it doesnt relate to any Museum object, category, or activity, we saved it. We are sentimental.
