A collection shaped by giving

An earlier object anchors the collection: a 1970s chalkware squirrel-shaped coin bank bequeathed to me by my grandmother in 1998. This personal inheritance precedes the hundreds of objects and images subsequently sent by friends, acquaintances, and members of the public. Together, these contributions connect family memory with the unexpected associations through which people encounter and recognize my work.

Made publicly accessible in spring 2022, the searchable database brings these dispersed gifts into a shared repository. Cataloguing preserves both the objects and, where known, the circumstances of their arrival. The collection becomes a record of squirrel representation and of relationships formed through giving, noticing, and remembering.

Squirrel Database asks how a community builds a collection together while apart, and what everyday objects reveal about our attachments to other species.

Building the archive

The database began with a practical question: how could I catalogue a growing collection of physical objects, place them in storage, and continue to access their images and histories? Information initially recorded on yellow sticky notes needed a more durable and searchable home. I considered Excel and Apple Numbers, but entering records directly into a collections-management system offered a way to avoid duplicating work during a later migration.

With research and technical assistance from Graham Nott, I selected CollectiveAccess, an open-source platform for managing and publishing museum and archival collections. My considerations included software support, configurable categories, data import and export, backups, connections to my existing website, and straightforward navigation for visitors.

Preserving objects and their histories

Building the archive involved photographing, measuring, describing, and labelling each object, then entering its information into the database. Each record received an accession number based on the date the object was purchased or gifted to me, using the format SQRL YY/MM/DD. Yellow sticky notes kept with objects since 2007 preserved acquisition details that could be transferred into the catalogue. Multiple photographs allowed different views and identifying features to be recorded.

The records were designed to document each object’s identity, acquisition, and physical characteristics:

• Accession number
• Item title and quantity
• Donor’s name
• Date of acquisition
• Description and dimensions
• Multiple photographs

Together, these fields allow the physical objects to be stored while their images, descriptions, and acquisition histories remain accessible for research.

The project also created an opportunity to train an assistant in data entry and involve others in documenting the collection. The practical toolkit included a laptop with internet access, a camera, image-editing software such as Photoshop and iPhoto, a label maker, and a measuring tape. Through this work, an accumulation of gifts became a searchable archive while retaining the individual histories attached to its objects.

Explore Squirrel Database →