Skip to main content

No Idea What to Do With It, Yet

 




Like a lot of people, I have heirlooms in my collection that I have no idea what to do with. The best example is probably something most people wouldn’t be able to identify by looking at it. It’s the steel toe from a work boot. In fact it’s the steel toe from one of my maternal grandfather’s work boots. My sister has the other one. Grandpa didn’t give them to us. In fact no one in the family gave them to us. My sister built her house on an acre of land next to where my grandparents lived, close to where Grandpa’s work shed had been. Our best guess is that these were from a discarded pair of work boots he wore while working on the railroad. The leather from the boots probably long since decayed leaving the steel toes. The archeologist in me kind of wants to dig around some more and see what else might be found, but I’m not sure my sister would appreciate turning her flower beds into a muddy mess.


So in the meantime, I’m going to be using a soft bristle brush to get rid of any loose dirt and then some CRC 3-36 to help slow down corrosion.


For more tips on preserving your own family objects don't forget to grab your copy of

Popular posts from this blog

Updating and Organizing

Since changing jobs I've gotten behind on posting my presentation handouts and updating my CV.  So I've spent the evening updating my CV, my Linked In profile, my website, and my slideshare account.  I'm not finished yet, but I should be in the next few days. Whew, I do not recommend getting this far behind in keeping your online information current!

Label, Label, Label

If there is one thing I could tell my younger self, it would be to label things. Sometimes not having a label is a blessing and sometimes it's a curse.  There have been mementos from my childhood that I kept for some reason and rediscovered them 20 years later. I look at them and I think, “What is this? Why did I keep this? What did it mean to me?” There’s no label and if I can’t remember what it was I usually get rid of it. These things are usually some kind of ephemeral thing that is easy to let go of. In these cases, not having a label can sometimes make it easier to let them go. And just as often, I also find labeled things of this nature and decide it’s time to let go of them since they don’t hold as much meaning to me as they once did. However, the vast majority of time I regret that I didn’t label something. There are things I find that I end up racking my brain trying to remember what they are and why I kept them; I agonize over it for days, sometimes weeks. Even worse thou...

Guided Access - Can It Aid in Device Management? – Part 2

In my last post I covered how Guided Access is being used to help us manage the iPads in our Reflection Areas. This time I want to share how Guided Access has worked on our iPod touches. The museum has 80 4th generation iPod Touches with our iOS app installed available for guests to check out. These are free thanks to the generous sponsorship of Cox Communications. After talking to colleagues at other institutions about their experiences, and trying out several alternatives, the decision was made to use iPod cases that do not cover the Home button. Even though covering the Home button could have helped control the devices, the benefits of allowing staff and knowledgeable users to easily service devices when needed seemed to outweigh the potential costs of leaving the Home button accessible. To conserve battery life and prevent new content from being installed on the iPods, we decided to use Apple's iPhone Configuration Utility to create a configuration profile to block access to ce...