Time Spent in Milwaukee

"Campbell's Soup Cans" by Andy Warhol
One of the reasons I enjoy working for USF are the professional development opportunities. At the end of April I attended the Midwest Archives Conference (MAC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to learn about developing trends in the archival profession. If you’ve never attended a professional conference before, it is usually made up of concurrent sessions on various topics, vendor fairs, tours, and student poster presentations.

I attended a behind-the-scenes tour of the Milwaukee Art Museum conservation lab before the conference sessions officially started. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures of the lab, but I did see a couple of Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Cans.”

At this year’s MAC, I attended the following sessions:
  • From Theory to Action: A Pragmatic Approach to Digital Preservation Strategies and Tools (A Digital POWRR Workshop)
  • Where Do We Store the Action Figures? Archives and the Growth of Popular Culture and Fandom Collections
  • Let’s DIVE into Archives
  • Playing Outside: Opportunities for Community Engagement Beyond the Archives
  • “The Perfect Is the Enemy of the Good”: Creative Solutions and Common Sense Approaches to Archival Problems
  • One Acid-Free Box Fits All: Exhibits That Work for Every Archives

As you can tell, the topics varied from broad, “Playing Outside: Opportunities for Community Engagement beyond the Archives,” to very narrow with, “Where Do We Store the Action Figures? Archives and the Growth of Popular Culture and Fandom Collections.” The archivists who presented were from all types of institutions, such as: historical societies, colleges and universities, businesses, museums, religious orders, etc. Having such different archive experiences helped me get a better sense of where archivists are around the Midwest, and what challenges face them.

1936 Harley Davidson motocycle
There was also a reception at the Harley Davidson Museum, which was extremely cool. A polka band played through dinner and the over 400 archivists in attendance were given tickets to the museum. You move through the museum chronologically and see the development of Harley through a timeline of motorcycles.

As a business archive, they focus on the motorcycles which made them famous, so their needs are very unique in terms of storage.

High density storage racks in the archives
High density racks are used to organize hundreds of bikes, which are on the 3rd floor of the museum. That’s a lot of weight! Mechanics also work in the archives to maintain the usability of their material. Without working machines, the accessibility of the archives plummets.

All in all, I enjoyed myself immensely!



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