Exercise 2: Situation Scenario Workshop: Documenting an Object
Choose any object that you have on hand (pencil, cup, clothes, sculpture, etc.) and pretend that the museum where you work has just acquired this object for its collection. The curator asks you to create an object record for this object, which can then be added to the collection's descriptive catalogue.
Take a few minutes to document this object. Determine what you know about the object and write this information down.
To help you, here are some examples of questions to ask about the object:
- What do we already know about this object?
- What is it called?
- Where does it come from?
- What is it made of?
- How old it is?
- What is its size or what are its dimensions?
- How much does it weigh?
- To whom does it belong?
- To whom did it use to belong?
- How did it end up in the museum?
Fill out a blank catalogue card (you can use the attached catalogue card in PDF format) by entering information in the appropriate fields on the card, without looking at a manual or a data dictionary.
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