This summer, I am starting in earnest a project I have been preparing for some time: a study of lacemaking in Canada as evidenced by its museum and archive collections. I am starting with Ontario and Quebec (from Toronto to Montreal) as these areas are close to home (Ottawa). I am hoping some of you who have done museum research on lace can help me.
I am trained in textile conservation and in cataloguing principals as part of my museum sciences background but my experience is with native art and photography. I have yet to work with textiles other than my own collection. The museums I have visited so far do not have any special way of cataloguing their lace (or any textiles). The CHIN system (Canadian Historical Inventory Network) is sorely lacking in sophistication re textiles and I have yet to see any models of inventory sheets for textiles in any books. So I need help in finding models. Both my own university research school and external sources of funding want to see what kinds of inventorying I will do and what kind of searcheable data bank I might establish. Any possibility of funding is predicated on my coming up with something workable by early September (funding application deadline) and I would like to spend some time this summer trying out whatever I come up with. Would those of you who work or have worked in museum collections, or who have established for yourselves workable inventory systems, send me a sample? You can invent the info entered on the sheet, its the 'fields' or category lables I'm interested in. What do you try to identify? What information do you track? What do you find most often missing or misleading? As a side issue, the funding agencies seem to think that digital photography is sufficient for my needs. I am trying to argue that a competent professional photographer using a high end lense camera can made clearer and more detailed photographs of textiles and that the quality of the prints, enlargements and reproductions merits the apparent high cost. I also argue that a standard photograph well processed by a competent photographer that understands archival needs has a much longer useable lifespan than today's digital photograph no matter how well taken. What do you think? I would be very interested in what the editors of printed materials (books, magazines, etc) and virtual media (web sites, etc) think about this. Both pros and cons will be very useful to me. Thank you in advance. If you are interested, I could post some of the inventory sheet examples I have been playing with until now. Let me know. Lucie DuFresne University of Ottawa Ottawa Canada - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
