Stories From Banting’s Basement: Week 7

Hello again! This week has been an exciting week! As you all know, I have been working hard at cataloging the objects and archival material in the Teddy Ryder collection. This past week I finished inputting all the information into the database.  Now, for each object I have put on an accession number, completed research, assessed the condition, and then entered into a database as per the steps laid out in my week 5 blog post about cataloguing. So, what is next for the collection?  

Well, first I need to update the finding aid. This is an important task as the finding aid will be used to find material for future research.  An example from the finding aid shows the information about Series 2: Correspondence and Sub-series 2.1: Correspondence Frederick Banting and Banting Office. Each section includes the title of the series (or sub-series), the date of the material, the extent (how much space each series takes up), the scope and content of the series, and if possible, a list of the items or files in the series.

Once that is complete, it’s time to put it away! Before this can happen, I need to assure that the boxes are appropriately labelled. On each label the accession number, the collection, and the series need to be identified as shown below. This makes it easier to identify the boxes in the future. It is also important that the material within the box is properly labelled for this same reason. For example, in Series 2: Correspondence of the Teddy Ryder collection it is organized into 21 sub-series’ that identify who sent the letter. Therefore, it makes sense to order the material in the box according to the sub-series’ as shown below.

Now the box is ready for storage, but where will it go?  

Here at Banting House, we conveniently have two storage spaces that have been divided into an object room and an archival room. Since the Teddy Ryder collection is a mix of both, the collection will be split up into the two room but don’t worry, the accession number I assigned them will assure that future researchers know the collection is together when looking up information in the database. Looking at Series 2: Correspondence once again, this material will be stored in the archival room as it is archival material.  

The archival room has space for cabinet storage, over-sized material, and regular-sized boxes. For Series 2: Correspondence, the material is stored in a regular-sized box so it was put on a shelving unit designated for regular-sized boxes as shown below.

We have just put the archival material in storage as you can see in the photo. You may notice that the boxes are put in order by series. This makes it easier to access in the future. Our next steps will be to create a plan to properly store the objects in the collection.

I hope you enjoyed learning a little more about what goes on “behind-the-scenes” of a museum. See you next week!