So how did I document the contents of Dow's?

 

The actual procedure was pretty straightforward – basically the pharmacy contents consisted of carboard boxes and glass bottles.

The bottles, especially after the consolidation of the Australian glass industry  in the 1920s, were all pretty similar, and the cardboard boxes, were, well cardboard boxes.

Some were interesting in terms of their design

 

But all were much of a muchness.

What it comes down to is that bottles are on the whole pretty boring, but the stories they can tell are interesting such as what the distribution of bottles of Owbridge’s lung tonic tells us about trade in the nineteenth century.

So, the procedure was fairly simple:

The pharmacy was divided into a set of areas, and a thematically named directory was created for each area.

Photographs were taken of each area and a Markdown document was created for each area as a finding aid, listing the locations of the objects.

Markdown was chosen as it is a well known structured text format and can be read without special software.  Filenames were of the format area_name.md

An excel spreadsheet was created for each area. Each spreadsheet has four columns, a sequence number, an object description an image column and a comments field. Filenames are of the format area_name.xslx.

Description fields contain the following, the object type, eg a glass bottle or a cardboard box, the label contents if present and whether the contents are present. If the contents are liquid this is noted as an aid to future conservation work. Colons are used to delimit the individual parts of the entry as an aid to converting and manipulating the data for ingest into some long term preservation solution.

An example entry may read

hexagonal blue glass bottle ~100mm: cork stopper: no label: contents not present

The second image column contains filename of a digital image of the object. Images are always stored in a sub directory named Reference Pictures

If the object is a cardboard box the image will be of the box and any contents, such as a metal ointment tube.

The final column is a freeform colon delimited text field.

If the object is a bottle and has a label, typically the first entry will the filename of an image of the label followed by an image of the rear label if present, then any embossing on the bottle. If a manufacturer is known the manufacturer will always be the last entry.

Information about manufacturers and individual products was researched and saved in a OneNote notebook to assist with the creation of detailed catalogue entries where required.

If the item is a cardboard box, the first four entries will be photographs of the faces of the box, followed by a description of the contents and one or more photographs of the box contents. As before, the final entry will be the manufacturers name if known.

Each object was examined and photographed and the basic parameters recorded. If leakage or damage was noticed, this was recorded in the comments section.

In the case of a cardboard box, it will be noted if the box was judged too fragile to be opened and the contents examined. Likewise it will be recorded if the box was sealed, preventing further examination.

At no time was any container opened due to the risks associated with exposure to the contents.

A variation in this methodology was used in documenting the contents of drawers in the shop area of the pharmacy.

·    Drawers were documented in sequence starting at the top left and finishing at the bottom right

·    Each drawer is to have its label and contents photographed in situ

·    Each drawer is to be treated as an individual artefact and the contents are to be documented as a set of contents within the artefact

o   Each separate artefact’s description is to be added to the comments field and  is to be prefaced with the word contains

o   Where an artefact itself contains multiple objects each component object is to be recorded in the comments field and prefaced with the string item_contains

·       Contents may then be removed, photographed and documented in the standard manner

·       Each drawer label is to be recorded.

·     If the label is damaged or missing that is to be recorded along with the position of the drawer in sequence

So essentially one ends up with a directory with a human readable name that contains a finding aid in markdown format, an excel spreadsheet and a subdirectory containing all the reference pictures.