MAKING A MUSEUM: Materializing Regimes of Value with the NYC Department of Sanitation

I'm assuming that the new guidelines for the keywords (all capitalized and with dashes, not commas) are to be used for the blog, as well as the archive? Robin or Haidy, could you please specify? Thanks!

Per my conversation with Robin, here is another vehicle that should be added:

Vehicle
-Flusher

How about Ground Zero as a keyword?

Also, another inconsistency I noticed was "George Waring".....shouldn't it be "Waring, George"? This way it follows the other examples of names? Just a suggestion! :)

Maya: one of the keyword terms is "Sanitation worker," which is what I've been using for unidentifable employees.

Also, not to be annoying, but there are still quite a few inconsistencies with the list. Namely:

1. The capitalization isn't quite uniform. For example, "collection truck" under "Vehicle" is lowercase, even though "Payhauler" under "Vehicle" is upper case. I assume the M.O. is to make secondary specifications lower case, except when they're proper nouns, such as "African-American," which is upper case, even though it's a specification of "Benevolent society."

2. In the main categories "On the Job, social" and "On the Job, work" the comma persists. Is that intentional?

3. Also, the second word of a two-part phrase seems to be lower case (unless the phrase is a proper noun). For example, it's listed as "Benevolent society" as opposed to "Benevolent Society." In that case, shouldn't "Emergency Response" be "Emergency response"?

4. Why is "chief's" possessive? Is there something I'm missing?

Anyway, there are these niggling problems (such as why are "Women" and "Hebrew Spiritual" capitialized as they are under "Benevlent society"? -- shouldn't they be "women" and "Hebrew spiritual"?)

I don't know how important it is to fix these problems, but they're there.

Oh, and our main categories (which are perhaps seperate, I don't know) don't follow the capitalization scheme of the rest. For example, shouldn't it be "Trash and transformation"? That would match "Benevolent society."

Honestly, having every word capitalized in all situations (except if it's "a" "and" or "the") looks quite a bit better.

PS. I've been having trouble uploading this comment, so sorry if it appears multiple times...

Also, how would we refer to a DNSY worker that is not an officer? Or perhaps a general term for any DSNY worker? Because I think that should be a keyword- I've been looking at photos where I see DSNY personnel but I cannot identify their rank or role.

Suggested keywords:

"9/11 clean-up" OR

"September 11th clean-up"

Also, how about "Hauling"

I added Katie's suggestions from her post about uploading from yesterday to the list. Great work - look forward to hearing from others of you as you start uploading to the archive.

Thanks Alex - those are all good keywords. A note about our own topics - we are using them as keywords because we want to be able to pull material out of the archive for our exhibition. However, they are broader than would conventionally be used as keywords, rather think of them as keywords that refer to our exhibition display categories (as a pose to the archive). You are right, as key words go they are too wooly and not necessarily that useful. They will probably only be useful for our project as a way of organising loosely our material (which gives some flexibility for YOU guys to interpret these themes in ways that are intuitive to your own research and respond to what you find interesting).
I agree with you Alex, these aren't categories that I would necessarily keep in as key words after the end of this class (e.g. not necessarily of use to the future museum for the DSNY). Some of the other words you mention, e.g. daily routine, uniform are definitely more useful and in keeping with what keywords are supposed to be).

Here's some more ideas:

Popular Representation
Personal Stories
Political/Organizational Infrastructure
Political Conflicts

Also, it seems to me that the terms "On the Job" and "Trash and Transformation" are pretty vague, though for differing reasons. "On the Job" is too broad -- it encompasses things like "equipment," "daily routine," "uniforms," "safety precautions," etc, etc. I understand we want some broadness, but this is too broad. It should be broken up into several smaller categories. And then the term "Trash and Transformation" seems a bit too academic/esoteric. I understand that it's supposed to encompass "recycling," "waste-to-energy-plants," "landfills," secondary scrap/large appliance markets," etc. But couldn't we come up with something a bit clearer, like "Second Life for Trash," or simply "Trash Transformation"? Or "Where It Goes" seems like a good name.

Keywords can be anything we think is really important - so will be descriptive terms as well as evocative terms and academic/disciplinary markers. So absolutely both equipment and health could be key words. If anyone can think of key words that spring immediately to mind - post them here in the comments so we can discuss which ones to add to the list!

Will our list of key words include categories for concrete aspects of the job(e.g. "equipment"), or markers that may be of interest to other disciplines as well (e.g. "health" or "ilness")?