Applications for funding are a big part of winter work at the museum. We’ve recently been told that MAP, the Museum Assistance Program (part of the Cultural Spaces Fund under the umbrella of Heritage Canada), has awarded the Salmon Arm Museum and Heritage Association with the funds to install two sets of rails for our rolling shelving. Funding from Young Canada Works, delivered by the Canadian Museums Association, has funded a Registrar of Collections for the Curatorial Department, someone to help move and document the museum’s artefact and archival collections and set up a storage system for easy access.
Rosemary’s fund, money donated in lieu of flowers when Board Member Rosemary Wilson passed away a year ago, will help with setting up the archives work room and we’ll throw a party in her honour in November. We plan to name the vault, our six sided concreted archives storage area, in her honour.
A third grant has been awarded by Gaming to build a visitors services counter in the end of the McGuire store for Operations. General Manager Susan Mackie and her crew will be moving into the administration space the Montebello as well.
At the same time, a contractor will take apart the archives rolling shelving before moving it into the new space. What does that mean?
My crew of volunteers will pack up our archival fonds (the grey boxes) and staff will move the collection.
In the meantime, Treasurer Gary Cruikshank has agreed to supervise the installation of some fixed storage to house the archives temporarily. The shelving was purchased from Target at a discount when it closed its Vernon doors in 2015. The shelving has to be cut to fit a lower ceiling of 11 ½ feet. No problem. We’ll buy the metal blades for the metal saw. Operations will supply the manpower and measuring tapes. The shelving will be bolted to the floor and walls.
This is such an exciting time at R.J. Haney Heritage Village. I tell the funders it is a once in a lifetime experience for the Registrar, the student involved in the move. He or she has an opportunity to design a storage system from the ground up to museum standards. When finished we will invite Japanese storage guru Marie Kondo to make a house call, but our shirts will not be folded!