This post was contributed by Bronwen Maseman, a Madison-based librarian, educator, consultant, and researcher. This case study is part of the Community Archiving Workshop Regional Training of Trainers program, funded by an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grant (RE-85-18-0039-18) in partnership with the Association of Moving Image Archivists.
The Museum and its Collections
The History Museum at the Castle is a vibrant local history museum located in an ornate former Masonic Temple in Appleton Wisconsin. Run by the Outagamie County Historical Society, the Museum aims to expand the public’s definition of a local history museum. The Museum’s exhibits and collections primarily document the history of Appleton, the Lower Fox River Valley, and Outagamie County Wisconsin. Exhibits and artifacts related to the life of famous magician and Appleton native Harry Houdini are a major draw for visitors to the museum of all ages.
The Museum’s collections consist of over 20,000 3-dimensional objects, 800 cubic feet of manuscripts, 2000 volumes of published materials, 350 maps and 35,000 photographs. Chief Curator Dustin Mack has primary responsibility for collection preservation, assisted by a strong base of dedicated volunteers, including Jan Krahn, a retired archivist.
Meeting the Collection Challenge: Training the Trainers with Community Archiving Workshop
Like many smaller heritage organizations, the History Museum at the Castle’s collections include endangered media types, which are at high risk for loss due to deterioration of the items themselves and/or the deterioration or loss of the equipment needed to play and/or preserve them.
Specifically, the Museum holds a collection of one-of-a-kind cassette tapes, consisting of occupational oral history interviews conducted between 1979 and 1980. These interviews are valuable documents of the ways residents of Appleton and the Fox Valley lived and worked during the 20th century. Their content is very valuable to the overall goals of the History Museum of the Castle. But their format puts that content, and those voices, at risk.
The tape inside a standard audio cassette is made out of very thin sheets of polyester or plastic. Data can only be recorded on or played from the tape after it has been coated with a thin layer of ferromagnetic particles, made either of iron oxide or chromium oxide. The particles are applied to the tape using a sticky substance called a binder. Information is recorded on the tape by magnetizing patterns of particles, which can be played back, erased and rerecorded.
Because recording and playback require the tape to have constant contact with the electromagnetic head of the tape recorder, audiocassette tape is very sensitive to damage. The tape can be damaged when it becomes dirty due to dust, hair and other substances getting inside the cassette. The cassette body can be easily broken as well. The tape itself can become twisted, tangled or broken. Cassette tapes can also fall victim to “sticky shed syndrome,” in which the binder used to stick the ferromagnetic particles to the polyester tape begins to break down, leaving a sticky residue every time the tape is played, and degrading the audio quality. For more information on audiotape preservation issues and strategies, you might want to check out the Northeast Document Conservation Center’s “Preservation 101” on the topic.
Due to these risks, Dustin Mack decided to participate in the “Training the Trainers” workshop held by Community Archiving Workshop Midwest and the UW-Madison Archives in Summer of 2019. He hoped to learn specific skills for gaining control over endangered media collections, and get advice and training from experts. Just as important as gaining information, however, was the opportunity to build connections with other individuals and organizations across Wisconsin who faced some of the same challenges.
When Dustin traveled to Madison in Summer 2019 and spent two days engaged in hands-on learning, enthusiastic tinkering, and face-to-face conversation, he and his cohort of trainers had no idea that such activities were soon to disappear from the realm of possibility. Like other CAW Training the Trainers participants, Dustin had originally hoped to bring his new knowledge back to Appleton and run another in-person workshop bringing together volunteers and museum staff to tackle the problem of identifying and preserving endangered collections.
Meeting the COVID Challenge: Jan Krahn to the Rescue
In March 2020, however, it became clear that the original plan would be impossible, and the fledgling community built by the Madison workshop turned to email and Zoom calls to figure out other ways to meet their objectives. Building knowledge of audiovisual (AV) preservation and making meaningful and efficient progress on AV projects was still on the table. Working together in the same rooms to do so was not.
History Museum at the Castle volunteer Jan Krahn suggested that one solution to the problem was for one person – her – to work completely alone, with access to materials but protected from the virus. In June 2020, Jan took on the task of methodically assessing the condition of the oral history audio cassettes. Using the Inventory Template and Instructions provided by CAW, Jan created an inventory of ninety tapes, including their location, title, date, duration, and a description of their contents. As discussed in the Digital Readiness Toolkit, gathering this information is a crucial first step towards digital readiness.
Without information about what you have, you can’t begin to figure out what to do with it!
Reflecting on the Process: Alone Together
Jan and Dustin’s experiences at the History Museum at the Castle demonstrated the challenges faced by small organizations during the Covid pandemic. Plans were upended, volunteers had to look for new ways to contribute, and the important work of preserving heritage continued. Dustin wants to point out that the very disruption of Covid showed the true importance of collaborative resource development and knowledge sharing through projects such as the Community Archiving Workshop. Such work may be even more important now due to the financial hardships experienced by smaller organizations and smaller communities over the past two years. Speaking in 2021, Dustin Mack stated:
“The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the workflow and threatened the sustainability of many volunteer-run organizations that hold AV materials. The CAW materials provide guidance for safe, independently conducted, projects that result in a clearly defined catalog. This is a particularly pressing need if the pandemic forces such organizations disband, and their collections need to be quickly assessed and transferred elsewhere.”
