Bryn Mawr College Library was recently awarded a Track IV, Collections Management Policy Grant of the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifact’s Philadelphia Stewardship Program. This grant will assist Special Collections in updating and further developing its Collections Development, Care & Maintenance, and Handling & Use Policies within the department. Among the benefits of this grant is that it will bring these policies in line with the most current standards and best practices. In turn, this will ensure longevity of the collections and will make them even more accessible for use by the college community.

Peruvian Textiles – Update

This past week Bryn Mawr College hosted a one-week course on Andean archaeological textiles taught by Dr. Anne Tiballi from the California Institute of Peruvian Studies. Students learned numerous weaving techniques and how to identify them in historic textiles by looking at objects from the Peruvian collections at Bryn Mawr College.  The last day of the week was spent at the UPenn Museum looking at examples from their Andean collections hosted by Dr. Clark Erickson, Curator and Julia Lawson, Conservator.

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Current Research – Peruvian Collections

On December 13, 2010, Dr. Ann Peters, Dr. Clark Erickson (Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania), Dr. Anne Tiballi (Department of Anthropology,  Binghamton University) and Jeanette Nicewinter (Intern, American Section, Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania), came to Bryn Mawr College to look at examples in our Peruvian textile collection, which includes more than 400 pieces. The purpose of the visit was both to assist BMC in cataloging Peruvian textiles and to give these visiting scholars a sense of the scope of the BMC collections. Their expertise in Andean textiles was invaluable as they helped us catalog dozens of textiles

As a result of this meeting, BMC is going to launch a test OMEKA site during the Spring 2011 where outside researchers can access records for many of our Peruvian collections. This project will assist us in identification and cataloging the collections, and we hope our collections will also benefit other institutions searching for comparanda of similar objects.

From left to right: Dr. Ann Peters, Dr. Anne Tibali, Caitlin Fregoe, Marianne Weldon, Emily Croll, and Jeanette Nicewinter.

From left to right: Dr. Ann Peters, Dr. Anne Tibali, Caitlin Fregoe, Marianne Weldon, Emily Croll, and Jeanette Nicewinter.

From left to right; Dr. Clark Erickson, Dr. Ann Peters, Marianne Weldon, and Dr. Anne Tiballi looking at a Peruvian textile in the BMC Collection.

From left to right; Dr. Clark Erickson, Dr. Ann Peters, Marianne Weldon, and Dr. Anne Tiballi looking at a Peruvian textile in the BMC Collection.