AASLH 2008 Day 2

Welcome back to sunny Rochester!

Day two started out in a session updating everyone on the Connecting to Collections initiative, which was interesting. I was truly hoping to hear anecdotes about success stories, but that was not the focus. Instead the focus was on updates about the program rather than its impact.

The morning plenary guest speak was Lynn Sherr, of ABC news and multiple books. She spoke fascinatingly about women's history, the history of women's history, and Susan B. Anthony. She was an excellent speaker and I was tempted to buy her book and get it signed as a gift for a relative.

I then skipped the luncheon, the meeting of the membership, and the silent auction, returning for the afternoon concurrent session. I attended a session where a conservator, a curator, and an exhibits person discussed issues of use and object presentation. It was an engaging session, with a lot of back and forth and interesting issues brought forward.

I then attended the evening reception at the Strong Museum of Play. This was excellent. This is the part of the entry where I start to get excited about today. The Strong Museum is Really Really Big. It's awesome in the awe sense of the word, especially if you love children's things and child like wonder. I was almost giddy when I walked into freaking Sesame Street.

I took advantage of behind the scenes tours of the collections space (15,000 square feet!!!) and of the exhibits construction/planning space. The collections space was a-freaking-mazing. Huge and with beautiful storage units and very interesting collections. I have some really remarkable images, but not uploaded. Expect a photo post in the future to make up for this.

Right now it is getting late and I want to run through my presentation for tomorrow one more time. I'll be putting that up on the blog later as well... eventually.