We are undertaking a lot of work on Sonic Landscape, including taking in donations and loans from people who have collected the musical heritage of Southcentral Kentucky. Band posters, CDs, musical instruments, and so many more objects have been given to help make this exhibit possible.
But once these objects are brought in to our care, what do we do with them? How do we get them ready for an exhibit? Where do we put it all?
One of the first major things we take care of after a donation is photography. Photos of an object are instrumental (badum-tss… get it? Because this is a music exhibit?) to anything we bring in. But why? After all, we have those objects right in front of us? Why would we need pictures?
We need to good pictures for records in our catalog, which help staff identify objects and track their locations. This is especially important for donations, such as one with over 100 posters(!), just to make sure we keep everything straight. It’s also especially important for loans that we take in so we can have images to digitize for exhibits.
Chloe Paddack, exhibits fellow, photographs a poster for the upcoming Sonic Landscape exhibit.
But we don’t always take photographs. While a camera is most convenient for large posters or 3D objects (like a guitar, for example), small 2D donations are much easier to scan using our high-resolution scanner.
Mary Lynn Claycomb, Kentucky Museum Assistant, laying newspaper clippings on the scanner, making sure to fit as many clippings as possible.
One they all are neatly placed onto the scanner, the computer software digitizes them at a high resolution. This helps us make replicas that we can print so we don’t damage any potentially frail objects or so we can return loans quickly and use reproductions over a longer term.
Our software lets us scan photography and documents at a high resolution to maintain quality.
Once the scans are successfully completed and uploaded to our system, we take the objects and store them away in a safe location until they are ready to be installed in the exhibit or returned to their owners (in the case of loans). Below, Bryan Morey waits for the elevator to take loans to our secure storage areas.
Bryan Morey takes the accessions to secure them in the vault.