Category: Museum Work

Overview of museums with online collections in the public domain.

The first post in our "Historians at Home" series.

An appeal for photographs.

Each year before college begins, Beloit College in Wisconsin puts out “The Mindset List” for the incoming freshman class. Originally compiled as a lark, it’s become a valuable tool for professors (and other adults) to understand an 18-year old’s perspective.

I wrote in March about cleaning out the house in which I grew up. We needed to “de-clutter” it anyway to put it on the market so we did the bulk of the removal at the same time. All the dishes, books, cereal boxes, knick knacks, records, and “what is this and why did they save it?” left the house. It was a huge feat but, as anyone who has been through this knows, it was far from being finished.

There’s a great line in the first Men In Black movie. Tommy Lee Jones is showing Will Smith alien technology, including a tiny compact disc, and says, “Looks like I’ll have to buy the White Album again.” Whether or not you liked the Beatles, it resonated with anyone who saw the change from vinyl records to tape (8-tracks and cassettes) to compact disc. In the 1990s I bought CDs of my favorite vinyl; now I’m buying vinyl from the 1980s of albums that I once had on cassette.

I’m cleaning out my parents’ house as we get ready to sell it. Mom passed away last fall and Dad left the house a week later to move into assisted living. Like many houses, the attic is packed with...stuff. For years before this, “what to do with the attic” periodically came up in conversation. Mom didn’t want to talk about it, Dad wrung his hands and worried about the burden on us kids, and my sister volunteered once to take care of it because “you’ll be dead someday – might as well empty it now.” My response was always, “No one touches the attic – I’m the curator.”