{"id":1741,"date":"2020-05-27T08:20:58","date_gmt":"2020-05-27T08:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/conservation\/?p=1741"},"modified":"2020-05-27T08:21:01","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T08:21:01","slug":"volunteering-at-national-museum-wales-preventive-conservation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/conservation\/volunteering-at-national-museum-wales-preventive-conservation\/","title":{"rendered":"Volunteering at National Museum Wales (Preventive conservation)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hello! Before I begin talking about my time volunteering, I should do a short introduction about myself. I\u2019m a MSc Care of Collections student at Cardiff University. It\u2019s a one year masters program where you learn about how to do preventive conservation. What is preventive conservation, you may ask? Don\u2019t worry, I only really understood what it was halfway through the course so we\u2019re good. It\u2019s the actions that we take to prevent museum objects from deteriorating quickly. We can\u2019t stop deterioration, but we can sure try to slow it down. We take actions so that (cross our fingers real tight) we don\u2019t have to send them off to a conservator to work on\u2026.at least not in the near future, probably in 100 years or so but not while I\u2019m alive, baby. I know there seems to be a lot of stuff added on to my description of what preventive conservation is, but that\u2019s because there\u2019s a whole lot of debate about those issues so I\u2019m trying to be as clear as I can but not go into too much detail, you know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyways, so that\u2019s what I learn and so this volunteering is specifically for preventive conservation \u2013 because there are other volunteering opportunities available at the museum like conservation, interacting with visitors, cataloguing, gardening, etc. I want to be as specific as I can to help whomever in the future is interested in volunteering for this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, let\u2019s jump right into it. The main thing that I did as a volunteer was integrated pest management (IPM). Now don\u2019t worry, it doesn\u2019t involve catching any insects (although you may need to pick up pest monitors filled with insects). It\u2019s really about monitoring pests by laying monitors and checking them in this case every 6 months to see what sort of pests we\u2019ve caught. This will allow us to determine what sort of pests we\u2019re dealing with and where, so that we can take action. Pests are a problem because they (especially the larvae) find museum objects especially delicious. National Museum Wales has a natural history collection, so dead animals and pests don\u2019t go well together (especially if we don\u2019t want our collections to be eaten and destroyed). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The part I found easy was the one where you looked at a floorplan with the pest monitors marked on it and located the monitor. The not so easy part was the identification of insects. We identify the insects caught in the trap and write down the type and approximate number on the back of the monitor. It took a while and I made my own cheat sheet to help, but really after a while you\u2019ll see that the same pests come up again and again so it\u2019s a matter of learning how to identify them by certain distinct features. We would also change pest monitors once they were filled with insects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two interesting things I learned from this is that spiders are not considered pests because they don\u2019t eat the collection, but they are a sign that there are insects that we should worry about because the spiders eat those insects. Secondly is that sometimes when the pest monitor is not too full, we leave the monitor there again, even if it has one or two dead insects. The next time we go and check it we can see what changes there are (since we mark what type of pests are caught on the monitors) and sometimes we find things have changed after some months. For example, if there was a larvae and an adult insect, and 6 months later we find only the larvae shell, what do you think happened? Basically the larvae hatched and the sticky parts of the monitor wasn\u2019t sticky anymore from the dust trapped on it, so the larvae found some convenient food \u2013 another insect \u2013 ate it, grew and went away. Not everybody finds that fascinating, but I thought that was cool when I learned about it. Other IPM-related things we learned was to identify frass. Frass is insect droppings. Being able to identify them will enable you to learn if you have a pest infestation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving on, another thing we did was dusting and interacting\nwith visitors. Why do these go together? Usually we dust in the galleries and\nit\u2019s a fantastic opportunity to talk to visitors about what we\u2019re doing and\nwhy. As you can see from the picture here, I\u2019m wearing a backpack vacuum\nholding a brush and my fellow volunteer has a small vacuum too. We usually set\nup like this with the poster and sandwich board, just so that if visitors are\nshy they can read about what we\u2019re doing on their own. In the background you\ncan see some pictures and the organ (we\u2019re in the gallery with the organ and had\njust finished dusting the frames). Dust comprises dead human skin and some\norganic material from clothes and other objects that enter the galleries, so\nthey can accumulate on frames, especially those around the height of the\naverage person. We vacuum because dust can cause damage on the frames and doesn\u2019t\nmake them look very nice \u2013 and dust is also food for pests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Me on the left with another volunteer, Lauren<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

One of the most amazing experiences I had whilst\nvolunteering was being able to vacuum under Dippy the dinosaur! Dippy is a replica\ndinosaur skeleton from the Natural History Museum and currently (2018-2020)\nhe\u2019s on tour around the UK. National Museum Wales Cardiff hosted Dippy from\nNovember till end of January and he brought in a lot of people. Lots of people\nmeans lots of accumulated dust, so I helped to vacuum it all and keep Dippy\nclean and happy. I think it\u2019s really fun, because how many people can say they\ncleaned up in a dinosaur enclosure? I had to be really careful of course and\nnot bump into any of his bones, especially the feet. As you can see, I\u2019m the\nperfect height as I\u2019m short enough to not bump into the bones making up the\nbody section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

We were taught techniques for dusting objects and it\u2019s\nreally about the magic wand swish and putting the nozzle of the vacuum at an\nangle to catch the dust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Dusting a bronze sculpture<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Lastly we did microclimate conditioning. We worked with the\narchaeology collection for this. They were kept in Stewart boxes and we needed\nto change the silica gel so that the microclimate in each box was dry enough to\nprevent corrosion from happening to the metal archaeological objects. We also\nput a humidity indicator to see if the silica gel was doing its job. Metals\nneed to be kept in conditions with low humidity to prevent corrosion from\nhappening, so the silica gel functions to absorb the moisture that is trapped\nin the box and the moisture that seeps into the box after a while. It was fun\nseeing all the cool archaeological finds, especially the helmet collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another thing that I really loved was the diversity of the\nvolunteer team. I\u2019m from Malaysia and my fellow volunteers came from Ireland,\nScotland and Senegal. It\u2019s really good that we all had this chance to gain experience,\nlearn and get to know each other through volunteering. Background wise, 3\/4 of\nus were Care of Collections and Conservation students at Cardiff University,\nwhile one was volunteering time doing media shoots. So you don\u2019t need to be in\nconservation to do this, you just need to have the interest and passion to\nlearn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope this has given some helpful insight to anyone\nwho wants to learn more about volunteering at NMW or preventive conservation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please note that everything here is my own personal experience and\nopinions, everyone has a different volunteering experience. If you want to\nlearn more check out the links below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is the NMW preventive conservation twitter <\/a>account if you want to check out some of the things I did and preventive conservation related topics. The official Amgueddfa Volunteers Twitter<\/a> account is really useful to get more information too, and of course the Amgueddfa Caerdydd\/National Museum Cardiff Twitter <\/a>account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another previous volunteer (Cardiff alumni Will Tregaskes) has written about his experience doing the same volunteering program, so you might want to check out his post<\/a>. Also check out the \u2018Volunteer\u2019 tag in the blog for other posts on volunteering experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

This blog post was originally written for and published at <\/em>mylittlechateau<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hello! Before I begin talking about my time volunteering, I should do a short introduction about myself. I\u2019m a MSc Care of Collections student at Cardiff University. 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