Project 2: Historic Columbia Foundation

Condition Reporting at Historic Columbia Foundation

Saturday, March 29, 2008, 11:00am - 4:00pm

Alexis Thompson the Collections Manager of the Historic Columbia Foundation is currently working on a collection-wide inventory of nearly 6,000 objects, which include furniture, ceramics, paintings, photographs (you name it, HCF has it) -- a project that is anticipated to conclude in the Spring of 2009. Our group was asked to help with this inventory by condition reporting a group of ceramics & metals from the collection. We began the morning with a quick greeting from John Sherrer, Director of Collections, followed by a quick recap of suggested readings and instructions on how to condition report. We worked as individuals, each tackling a box of objects in need of routine condition reporting & photographing. Alexis was on hand for the duration of our project, walking between tables to answer any questions. At the end of the afternoon, volunteers were given a quick tutorial on HCF's collections database, Past Perfect, and had the opportunity to enter a few of their paper reports into the system. This project instructed volunteers in how to handle/what to look for when condition reporting ceramic and metal objects, photographing objects, and entering information into a collections database.