New Year's Resolutions

I know many of you have created resolutions this New Year in order to start fresh or improve yourself.  Your resolution may be to be healthier, by eating right or working out, or it may be to learn a new skill, like learning a foreign language or developing a hobby.

I myself have developed my own personal New Year Resolutions.  And I think I need to develop ones for my little corner of The Petroleum Museum. 

We at the Museum anticipate 2012 to be interesting, to say the least.  We hope to finish our Capital Campaign and to start our $15M renovation of the oil & gas industry exhibits.  With those events looming, there is a lot to take care of!  Before demolition, we have to move the collections, both what's on display and what's in storage, off-site.  So, there's a lot of prep work that I need to complete before the ground-breaking. 

Below are my resolutions or goals for the upcoming year.  Many of these I started last year, but for whatever reason, never finished or just dropped the ball.  Some of them are re-focusing on what my job duties entail and trying to be better in those duties.

1) Migrate to updated version of collection management database.

2) Complete inventory of all collections in storage.

3) Develop & implement plan for moving collections off-site.

4) Gain more meaningful followers on the Museum's social media tools (Facebook & Twitter).

5) Be an advocate for the Museum while at work and while not at work.

Wish me luck in keeping my New Year Resolutions!  What are your resolutions?

Oil in Libya

The Petroleum Museum's Library & Archives Center has been a hive of activity recently. We now have four faithful volunteers in the Center, working on various projects. One volunteer, Ms. Hunt, took on the task of processing a small collection found on the backlog shelves.

Turns out, the collection from Robert Stine, long-time patron of the Museum, dealt with the building of the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline in the 1970s AND the ESSO (now EXXON) oil industry in Libya in the 1960s.

Finding materials about the oil industry in Libya? How timely, considering the current events happening. I knew that Libya was an "oil-rich" nation in northern Africa. But I did not know much about its political or economic history.


Above: Some of the materials included in the Robert Stine Collection (2011-002).

After a little digging (thanks to Wikipedia and the New York Times online), I discovered that Libya was a kingdom prior to 1969. All of the ESSO materials in this particular collection pertaining to Libya date prior to 1969. Turns out, the Libyan kingdom was pro-Western and friendly with Western countries such as the U.K. and the U.S. According to one of the publications ESSO in Libya 1963:

"The Libyan Petroleum Law became effective in June 1955 and Esso Libya applied for, and was granted, nine concession areas covering about 100,000 sq.kms. The company then began the painstaking search for oil."

"Esso was the first:
* To discover oil in Libya
* to build a crude oil pipeline to the sea
* to build a marine terminal
* to produce and export oil to foreign markets
* to build a refinery in the country to produce processed oil products for local consumption
* and among the first to agree to the Petroleum Law Amendments of 1961."

On 1 September 1969, a small group of military officers led by then 27-year-old army officer Muammar Gaddafi staged a coup d'état against King Idris, launching the Libyan Revolution. After the coup, Gaddafi closed American and British bases and partially nationalized foreign oil and commercial interests in Libya.

An interesting story ...

January Wrap-Up & February Preview

I cannot believe the first month of 2011 has come and gone already! Things have been seemingly low-key at the Museum this month.

One major accomplishment for January: I completed my major project of creating an accession register for the archvies & library donations since 1965. It's nice to know what the Museum actually has! Not only did I create an electronic register (thanks to Excel), I also added most gift/donation information to our collection management database Re:Discovery. With time, and practice, every piece in our collections should be searchable in the database! That will allow us to better serve researchers, visitors and just interested people! Next step? Conducting an inventory to match up actual items (objects, books, manuscripts, etc) with the information. Wish me luck!

Now I can also turn my attention to the Train to Share project I've discussed multiple times here. We are finally ready to start uploading the digital objects and their associated metadata! Hopefully the team will be able to upload our 1000 objects!

Lately, I've also been very busy with researchers and other visitors looking for photographs. In fact, one Friday (typically a quiet day for the Archives Center) I had three appointments and a conference call scheduled. I had to schedule another researcher for the next week because I was so busy! It's great that the Library & Archives Center has had such a demand!

February will be a busy month for the Museum. On the 17th, we'll host our third Family Science Night of the [academic] year: Inventions! Come to the Museum between 6:30 and 8:00 p.m. to learn and explore well-known and not-so-well-known inventions. Lemonade and cookies are provided! Then, a couple of days later, the Museum will host Read-A-Rama on Saturday, the 19th. Come explore the wonderful world of reading and literacy!