Written by Alina Ennen, Marketing Intern at Queensland Museum Tropics
Alessandra ‘Allie’ Schultz is the Assistant Collection Manager of Cultures & Histories at Queensland Museum Tropics (QMT) in Townsville, responsible for managing the Archaeology (primarily Maritime), Social History, and First Nations collections.
Allie’s role involves facilitation of object loans and photography, managing databases, supporting conservation activities such as object storage and treatments, developing collection management strategy, and providing public access to QMT’s collections. Her background in antiquities collections and ancient world studies informs her approach to managing interdisciplinary collections, and she has a holistic mindset which facilitates cross-disciplinary outcomes. Allie earned several awards in her academic area of expertise and its application in preserving cultural heritage prior to joining QM’s Cultures & Histories team, and she is passionate about accessibility and the role museums play in driving social change.
Read Allie’s profile here.
We, the Engagement team at QMT, joined Allie for a day to see what she gets up to in her role, alongside the Museum’s curators and conservators.
Arriving at 9am, Allie checks her emails and plans out her day, setting up her priorities for the week. These can include a vast array of work items, from business-as-usual activities (e.g. administering object records, facilitating object loans for exhibitions, etc.) to projects developing certain areas of the collection (i.e. improving storage conditions, publishing object records to Collections Online). No day is ever the same for our Collections & Research team.
By 9.30am, we joined Allie in the Cultures & Histories Collection Store to document objects for registration into the Maritime Archaeology collection. A large part of Allie’s role is documenting objects and creating database records which involves describing, photographing, measuring, and weighing the objects, and then creating custom storage solutions for the objects to be stored as part of the State Collection.
We also learned how Allie uses the Collection Management System to capture raw data for curators to analyse in their research on the objects.
As Allie had already conducted photography on the collection items (a time-consuming and detailed undertaking itself) – we helped her decide which photos would be the best to use in the database. Capturing the perfect angles of the object so that you always can identify it easily, and preserve its original state digitally is crucial when documenting the collection. Additionally, Allie explained how objects should be described in a detailed way to facilitate identification and create a means of communicating the visual appearance of an object. Doing this for accessibility purposes (including but not limited to describing objects for the vision-impaired community) is also important.
Among her other collection management tasks, over the last few weeks, Allie has been working on improving storage conditions for certain collection items from the HMS Pandora shipwreck. This is done to preserve delicate objects, recovered from an underwater environment of the archaeological site in the 1980s and 1990s, in perpetuity. As preservation standards in museums are always evolving, Allie applies best practice in her work. With her Pandora rehousing project, she is implementing new storage solutions, nesting objects carefully in custom inserts within boxes, using archival-grade materials (which are distinctive from household grade cardboard for their inert composition).
In doing this, Allie says “We’re constantly working on new solutions to store our items the best way possible.”
After lunch, Allie meets with other members of the Collections & Research team at QMT to collaborate on projects, offering and sharing specialist advice in collection management activities across collection areas. Allie explains how it is invaluable to workshop collection management approaches with others, exchanging cross-disciplinary knowledge with the Biodiversity team for the benefit of the State Collection at large.
In the late afternoon, we worked together in the QMT Cultures & Histories Archive on the HMS Pandora Legacy Project which aims to digitize the excavation records of the Pandora collection and make it universally accessible for the public to view and research. We sorted images that the excavation team took on their expeditions to the underwater site and filed the physical image slides afterwards. You can read more about the ongoing project here.
Spending an entire day with Allie has highlighted current collections-based work at the Museum for the team at large and exemplifies the dedication and meticulous effort of QM staff to preserve and digitize historical and archaeological artefacts. From photographing and labelling objects to developing innovative storage solutions, Allie’s role ensures that these items are accessible and protected for future generations.
Alina Ennen is a student from Germany interning with Queensland Museum Tropics, Townsville. As part of her internship in the Museum Engagement team, Alina learnt about the many facets of the museum and wrote about her time with Cultures & Histories team.
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