Heather Marie Wells

I'm consolidating my blog into my website to create more efficiencies. I would love for you to join me over at my newly designed website:  http://www.heathermariewells.com/ ! I've got new information about my upcoming online class, Basics of Vintage Photo Care, as well as a number of free download resources. I'll see you over there!

In previous posts I’ve talked about how I actually use some of my heirlooms or in other cases I wasn’t sure what to do with my heirloom .   Today I want to talk about another way to use an heirloom or a keepsake. I recently found a favorite childhood necklace of mine. You can tell it’s been well loved from the stains and fraying of the ribbon.  Again this is not something that has monetary value, it just has sentimental value to me. I loved ballet as I child. I read every ballet book in my elementary school library. I watched ballet as often as it was on the local PBS station, mostly The Nutcracker at Christmas. I dreamed of being a prima ballerina, but sadly lessons were never available in my small community. But somehow this necklace always made me feel special. I don’t remember where the necklace came from - the store, who gave it to me, or if it was given to me on a special occasion. But I remember the feeling it gave me every time I wore it - like my dreams were sti...

I love this time of year, there’s just something about Halloween through Epiphany that speaks to my soul. Halloween is just good fun, we get to shed our daily personalities and be what we want for an evening. Then Thanksgiving really is a time for me to reflect on what I’m thankful for and at the heart of that is always my family. I always think about them in a more pressing, way if that makes sense, starting in November and through Advent and into Christmas. The past years of Thanksgiving and Christmas meals tumble through my mind.  I think of how we’ve grown and aged. I remember and re-mourn those we have lost. I delight and rejoice in those we have gained. When Advent comes I love getting out the decorations and ornaments as they bring back old memories to life - as you know from my past writings this is particularly true of my handmade ornaments . But I have another collection that comes out of storage this year that also means a lot to me. My Christmas cards.  You mig...

This time of year excites me for so many reasons. I love the holidays. I love spending time with my family. We get together and eat wonderful food that’s been passed down for generations and afterward most of the menfolk nap all around the house and the women and kids play board games. Although these last few years playing board games has been more difficult with so many toddlers!    Once Thanksgiving is over, Advent and Christmas decorating, and preparations begin! Some say I go a little crazy decorating – yes, I even decorate my bathrooms. I don’t know maybe its because I’m the daughter of a second generation real bearded Santa or maybe it’s just because I still have a childlike heart when it comes to the magic and wonders of Christmas, but either way no surface of my house goes undecorated. I’ve been known to have seven trees of various sizes up during a season. And that’s when I get to see some of my most prized possessions after nearly a year in storage. Handmade ornament...

I often get asked about what supplies I keep on hand at my own house for helping me organize and care for historical objects. I’ll confess I’ve not been the best at keeping them organized but I’ve recently been inspired to get my tools more organized. But I’ll share with you some of my top tools and you might be surprised at how many you might already have too. A #2 mechanical pencil - We try to do no harm to what we’re taking care of and that also means that the majority of things we do needs to be reversible. Hence pencil not ink. I prefer #2 pencils because they tend not to smudge. A gum eraser - Mistakes happen. I prefer gum erasers because they are softer and tend to cause less damage. The last thing you want to do is rub a whole in your photo or document while you are trying to erase something. But they are messy so be prepared for that with brushes, a trash can and a handy vac. pH testing pe...

  Well, I’m still looking for the interview tapes of my grandfather and my mother-in-law. In this round I’ve learned not to trust labels. I found a commercial tape in a “homemade” cassette holder. That prompted me to go back through all my commercial tapes and look in the cases. I found some home tapes in them and got all my commercial tapes back in their cases. I found a tape that was labeled with my husband’s name, but I listened to it anyway. It was an accompaniment tape from my voice lessons. I updated the label. I found another tape that was labeled Heather’s Birthday Present. I listened to it. Turns out it was my birthday present TO my husband. I updated the label to be more precise.  So what did I uncover in this round of listening? Lip Sync contest tape from Elementary School. I still can’t believe we didn’t win with Ghostbusters. But also on that tape was my sister singing, and the B side was some square dance calling. I’m going to have to ask my parents if they recog...

  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 loos...

  When people find out my degree is in Museum Studies and I work at a museum, I’m constantly being asked questions like: “What things do I need to look out for in order to protect my keepsakes?”  “What’s the worst thing that could happen to my great-grandmother’s wedding dress?” “So my photos are just thrown into a cardboard box, that’s probably not the best thing, right” “I could never afford to properly store my grandfather’s Bible, could I?” The majority of my answers revolve around four things that can endanger your treasures so, I’ve created a little guide on those things and solutions you can start implementing today to help mitigate them. I’ve made it in a worksheet form to really help you think through changes you might need to make. But I also wanted to share a fifth thing for you to be aware of just in this blog post and that’s how materials can interact with each other. The more complex an object is as far as the materials that it is made up of the more complex it c...

  I’m often asked, “But what should I DO with my family heirloom?”  My response is always, “What do you want to do with it?” At this point people are often taken aback. I think they assume I’m going to tell them to lock it away in storage and never use it again for fear of breaking or damaging it. In some cases, that may be what might be best for the object. You have to consider the condition its in and what your goals are for it. If it is a book in poor condition, but you are hoping your great-grandchildren will get to see it. Then, yes, probably the best thing to do is stabilize it and store it, taking it out occasionally to check on the condition, but to try to manipulate it as little as possible.  Other objects don’t necessarily need to be treated so delicately. For instance, something I chose that belonged to my maternal grandmother was soup bowls. There were only two of them and they aren’t valuable. They're Anchor Hocking from the 1970s. They were her everyday dish...

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...

Along with the rest of the Museum departments, the Digital Media team has been hard at work to create interactives for the State of the Art exhibition.  One project we created was the State of the Art mobile app.  The app is available for free on Apple  and Android  platforms. I’ve been asked a few times why we decided to have a separate app for the exhibition (rather than just a temporary exhibition tour in the Crystal Bridges App) and why a guest should consider installing it on their own device.  There are both technical and experiential reasons.  On the technical side, mobile apps are at their best when they have a focused function.  The CB Museum app functions well because it is primarily an audio guide for the Museum’s entire permanent collection.  We wanted to offer a similar all-encompassing and in-depth mobile experience for this special exhibition. So what are some of the highlight features in the State of the Ar...

Crystal Bridges knows that the majority of our guests come to the Museum with some kind of mobile device, and we are working hard to offer experiences to those that would like to use their own devices at the Museum. Although cell service has always been tricky in the building—remember while you are at the museum, you are in a ravine with three-foot-thick concrete walls—we continue to work with the major cell carriers to strengthen our signals, and have achieved some great improvements. However, depending on the carrier, some guests may still experience low signal strength. We would like to remind you that since opening, we have offered a free Wi-Fi network for our guests called “CBMAA Guest,” and there’s no password needed to join. Six things to consider when using your mobile device: 1. The new mobile version of our website can help you find directions to the Museum and plan your visit. There are even menus to help you decide what you want at Eleven for lunch or ...

Recently, Crystal Bridges received the Gold MUSE award for Audio Tours and Podcasts from the American Alliance of Museums’ Media & Technology committee for the audio/music tour of the temporary exhibition This Land: Picturing a Changing America in the 1930s and 1940s .  This is the highest award that a museum can receive for an audio tour.  MUSE awards honor outstanding achievement for digital media that enhances the experience and engages audiences. They celebrate scholarship, community, innovation, creativity, education, and inclusiveness.  Judges consider each project’s accessibility in terms of ADA, the overall production quality, the inventiveness, and the impact that the project makes to the museum field. The goal of Crystal Bridges’ winning audio tour was to illuminate guests’ exploration of the exhibition in a unique way. Thus we partnered with the Fayetteville Roots Festival to curate a collection of music to accompany  This Land . Each o...

A few weeks ago the Arkansas Museums Association hosted it’s annual meeting in North Little Rock. The meeting is a wonderful two and half days of sessions and events that allow museum professionals from all over the state to get together to exchange ideas and offer each other support for challenges that they might be facing. I attended the conference as a board member and I presented a session on new technologies in museums.  Our Director of Security Geoff Goodrich also presented on everyday security for museums. The annual meeting concludes with the awards banquet, which is always a special occasion as we take time to recognize each other’s accomplishments.  My position on the board is as the representative from the third congressional district and I’m proud to say that out of the eight categories of awards five awards went to museums in our area. (You can see award winners on the AMA’s facebook page ) Crystal Bridges received recognition for Outstanding Achiev...

The reason I was drawn to the use of technology in museums is that it has the power to make the museum more accessible.  Unfortunately a museum can’t be open 24 hours a day 7 days week, but through technology the art and museum programs can be. My duties at Crystal Bridges include managing the mobile app and producing all the audio tours that have been published through the app.  But I also managed the Museum’s presence in iTunes U . In case you are not familiar with iTunes U ,  it is the section of the iTunes store that is dedicated to educational content.  All the content providers in that area are educational non-profits and all the content provided must be free.  Providers include such organizations as Harvard, Yale, the Smithsonian Institution, and The Museum of Modern Art, as well as other Arkansas providers – Arkansas Department of Education, University of Arkansas, and the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History. On iTunes U the ...

Currently I've been working on a new website for my presentations and handouts.  I've also been working on catching up on my research readings. Which, you guessed it, means new blog posts!! Other than that, I've been working really hard on maintain a number of projects at Crystal Bridges.  We launched a new version of the app a few weeks ago and it's been going well.  And of course there are always new files to published for iTunes U. I'm also looking for some new tech podcasts.  Bring forth the recommendations, and thanks in advance!

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...

Crystal Bridges opened to the public on November 11, 2011. Through our first year we have been using two kinds of Apple consumer products (iPod Touches and iPad) for different purposes, but both are set-up for public use. Instead of jailbreaking them to gain more control, the Museum made the decision to use the devices as they came from the manufacturer and only employ configuration profiles. We have three areas in our museum called Reflection Areas that are set-up with comfortable seating and collections of art, architecture, and nature books. Each of these areas also has two iPads running iBooks, the iOS ebook reader. The ebooks installed are a mix of internally-produced books about the museum and its collection and public domain books on art and nature. In order to help secure them and control access, the iPads are in enclosures that cover the home button. Despite the enclosures, on several occasions guests have used the sleep button to turn the devices off in order to exit the ...

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!

Several months before the museum opened, a number of staff members were asked to speak at a staff meeting about our belief in a great museum's power to transform individuals and communities. Because of the American Association of Museums recent advocacy efforts in DC, I felt compelled to go back and clean up the notes, which I had hastily written on short notice, and share my thoughts with more of my museum colleagues and friends. I hope that for some of you this will inspire you to include your voice and get involved. It's important that we all continue to work to save funding for museums. We believe in a great museum's power to transform individuals and communities. I feel like this statement is the story of my life. When I was growing up, my family was by no means what you might call "well off," so my parents were very careful about how they planned family vacations. We did not go to amusement parks and such, because they were just too expensive for a fa...