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10,000 Items Catalogued

Almost exactly one year ago today, staff member Aya Eto brought to your attention a project we had then just begun in earnest, a project to catalog 10,000 items relating to the construction, service, destruction, legacy, and research on the U.S. Steam Battery Monitor and the C.S. Ironclad Virginia. You can read what she wrote here and see a few of Jacob Nicklis’s letter’s home to his father. Nicklis died in the foundering of Monitor off Cape Hatteras in 1862.

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You might recall from Aya’s post that this project was funded in part by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The IMLS, as it is called in the biz, has funded a several Mariners’ Museum initiatives in the past and we have been very fortunate to have their continued support for this one. According to the terms of the grant, then, we are to photograph and catalog 10,000 items for our own catalog, and send as many of those to WorldCat as are worthy of going up. I’ll talk more about WorldCat in a subsequent blog entry.

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Well folks, the unofficial news this morning, almost 1 year to the day after Aya wrote that blog entry, is that we have finished! There is some normal clean-up to do, records to review and correct, items that are waiting to upload to WorldCat, that sort of thing, but we are declaring VICTORY! The photography is complete, the catalog records have been created and the photos attached.

You’ll hear a good bit about how we did what we did and what it all means for you, maritime lovers and Civil War history buffs, in the coming days and weeks. We’ll have some guest blog entries from volunteers and staff members who helped us along the way. We’ll give you a list of the collections we catalog, and some tips for searching our catalog for them. And we’d love to hear from you, once you’ve seen the results, and see what you think.

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