Uni’s cultural collections offer students a unique opportunity
[ UniNews Vol. 15, No. 1
6 - 20 February 2006 ]
By Helen Arnoldi
Students in disciplines as wide-ranging as History, Art Curatorship, Museum Studies, Information Technology and Music took the opportunity in 2005 to gain vocational experience as part of their coursework or research through projects involving the University of Melbourne’s many cultural collections.
The University of Melbourne Student Projects Program (Cultural Collections) offers students valuable skills through working with one or more collections under the supervision of established curators, archivists, librarians, collection managers and conservators.
The program aims to encourage student involvement with the cultural collections and in turn the student projects add real value to the collections, contributing to their future management, preservation and appreciation.
Student projects are developed after consultation between the Student Projects Coordinator and the respective collection manager and are designed to provide the students with a unique opportunity to expand their vocational skills and enrich their learning experience.
Following an initial selection process students are matched to a suitable project which relates to their studies, skills or interests. While the majority of the projects are collection management in nature, they attract students from a wide range of disciplines.
The collections, which are similarly diverse, include museum, archive, library and science collections, most of which relate to the various disciplines that have historically been taught at Melbourne.
The 18 students who undertook Cultural Collections student projects last year had varied reasons for seeking a placement. While some students were fulfilling the requirements of a subject within their degree, others were wanting to complement their academic experience with practical work experience.
The cultural collections projects also attracted students from other tertiary institutions who were keen to work with this University’s culturally significant collections. Few Australian universities have collections of the scope and quality of Melbourne’s.
Twelve of the University’s collections benefited as a result of 2005 student projects including those of the Physics Museum, Historic Maps Collection, University of Melbourne Art Collection, Herbarium, Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, Medical History Museum, Rare and Historic Musical Instruments, University of Melbourne Archives, Rare Materials Collection in the Architecture and Planning Library, Rare Collections in the Music Library and the Classics and Archaeology Collection, located at the Ian Potter Museum of Art.
Tasks included cataloguing, exhibition creation, interpretation and display, research, assessment of conservation requirements, website design and the completion of a Significance Assessment.
Bachelor of Music students Wei Wei Ho and Anna Liu, for example, became involved with the cultural collections projects through their fourth year subject Work Experience and Career Preparation.
Anna and Wei Wei’s project involved the cataloguing of the rare and historic examples of musical instruments housed within the Faculty of Music, many of which were donated to the University by the celebrated Australian soprano, Dame Nellie Melba, almost a century ago. They received training in the procedures necessary to handle and catalogue the instruments, and were able to draw on their music knowledge to assist them in the more technical aspects of the project.
As part of this placement they completed manual catalogue worksheets, measured and photographed the instruments, noted inscriptions and assessed the instruments’ condition. The information they gathered will form the foundation for future research and a Significance Assessment of this collection.
Ned Brooks, as part of his Bachelor of Arts degree, completed his History in the Field placement with the Historic Maps Collection housed within the ERC’s Map Library. Ned’s project was to undertake a Significance Assessment on this collection.
The project involved first familiarising himself with the collection – no easy task given there are approximately 15 000 maps. Once the parameters of the collection had been defined, Ned utilised a set of established criteria to assess the historic, aesthetic, research and social significance of the historic map collection.
The skills he gained included the use and application of Significance methodology, research skills, object handling and perhaps most fortunately for him, he had the opportunity to explore this wonderful collection up close.
The completed assessment will be used as a starting point to help inform future collection management decisions in areas such as conservation, acquisitions, interpretation, valuations and access.
Jackie Eager, a student studying for her Masters in Public History at Monash University, chose to work with the collections of the Physics Museum. In consultation with staff from the Department, Jackie wrote a series of short histories on a selection of instruments created as part of the work of the Optical Munitions Panel during in the Second World War.
Jackie explored the development of the instruments within the context of the University of Melbourne and Australian science at the time. The interpretative text panels that she completed on these instruments are being uploaded onto the catalogue for the Physics Museum which is accessible to the public through the Physics Museum’s website www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/museum/
Chris Galtieri, Devinia Au, Lun Zhang, Michael Tsoukalis, Georgia Alevizos and Daniel Barkho, completing Bachelor of Information Systems degrees, worked on three of the University’s cultural collections: the Herbarium, Rare Collections of the Music Library and the Classics and Archaeology Collection as part of their Industry Project subject.
Their projects, undertaken in consultation with the collection managers, involved creating and updating websites for the collections. The students used approved University templates to ensure the sites’ consistency in appearance with other University pages. As a result of the work these three collections will have a more dynamic and engaging web presence which will help them in building profile and gaining public awareness.
Another type of student involvement with Melbourne’s cultural collections is the use of collection objects by students undertaking the Master of Cultural Materials Conservation degree in the University’s Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation. The students, who will eventually be conservators of objects, paintings or paper in museums, libraries, archives and other institutions, work on items from the University’s collections for their assignments relating to condition assessment and treatment.
The aspiring conservators not only get an opportunity to work with objects of cultural significance, but the conservation documentation and treatments they undertake are of genuine benefit to the long-term preservation of the items themselves.
Conservation student Rebecca Dallwitz worked on treating a plaster orchid from the collection of the University of Melbourne Herbarium. The orchid was one of six plant models treated by Rebecca and other students.
The models, made from plaster, wood, brass, paper, paint and papier mache, are complex objects for students to tackle. All objects were damaged from past teaching use, were covered in dust and ingrained dirt, had areas of past restoration which included misaligned adhesion, overpaint, cracking and loss.
Rebecca spent more than 40 hours, cleaning, reversing old repairs, infilling and inpainting losses.
This year we plan to incorporate more of the collections into the Program and develop projects that will have appeal to students from an even broader range of courses.
Our main objectives remain to ensure the relationship between the students and the collections is mutually advantageous and that the Program works to enrich our understanding, management and appreciation of the University’s cultural collections – ensuring their relevance on campus and to the wider community.
Helen Arnoldi is the Student Projects Coordinator (Cultural Collections), Information Services
For more information and links to Cultural Collections web pages see: www.unimelb.edu.au/community
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