Tiffany - Cataloguer

Tiffany's experience cataloguing female cricket player collections onto eHive led to a job as a Museum Cataloguer for Project Ark, Murihiku Museums.

In year 12 at The Catlins Area School, while attending a career meeting to discuss with my parents and the Principal what I wanted to do as a job, I surprised everyone, including myself, when I blurted out that I wanted to work in museums. The school suggested I study anthropology and history at university and so in 2013 I started at the University of Otago. After completing my Honours degree in History, I began looking to apply for museum jobs, but it seemed that every job required a Museum Studies qualification. With four-year's worth of student loan, I didn’t want to be getting into more debt and so I was really happy when I discovered that I could complete the Masters in only a year. Having already undertaken a significant research project in my Honours year, the practice-based learning of the Masters of Museum and Heritage Practice (MMHP) appealed to me. My jobs during uni gave me little opportunity to put my research and writing skills into practice outside of academia, therefore, I viewed the MMHP as a way to develop my skills while gaining the occupation-based experience that I lacked.

When I applied, I largely saw the course as a ticket to get past the job requirements of having the qualification and to an extent it does function like this, however, of most benefit for me was being surrounded by people who love to think and talk about museums and culture. The conversations both in and outside of class opened many new avenues of thought and consideration both in theory and practice and this continued during my internship at the New Zealand Cricket Museum.

My internship working on the ‘Women in Cricket’ project at the New Zealand Cricket Museum confirmed that museums is where I want to be. Prior to this, my knowledge of cricket was limited but I discovered my love for discovering people’s past stories creates a connection through time which transcends diversities of subject. Now, I love talking to people about women’s cricket. At the NZ Cricket Museum, I gained experience in implementing my research and writing skills in a Collections role through cataloguing female player collections onto eHive.

I now work as a Museum Cataloguer for Project Ark, Murihiku Museums (@projectarksouthland) . We are a roving collection team of three who catalogue, photograph and then package collection items for small museums in Southland. At present, we are cataloguing and photographing the top 50 collection items from each small museum in Southland (15 museums). At the beginning of 2019, we will begin cataloguing, photographing and packing the entirety of the Wyndham Historical Museum’s Collection. The goal is for our pilot to get the green light and then progressively over the next ten to fifteen-years every small museum in Southland will have the entirety of their collection, catalogued, photographed and packed for storage. It’s tricky to capture the history and heritage of entire regions and unfortunately this means that sometimes the smaller places miss out. Coming from a small area, I am proud to be part of a project which aims to highlight the importance of small-town history and heritage in New Zealand. Without the experience from my internship, I wouldn’t be in the position of helping pave the future for regional heritage.