TTU Research Aide - Clothing & Textiles / History bei Museum of Texas Tech University

• Assists in conducting the timely process of accessioning, including all aspects of assessment, cataloging, numbering, housing, and documentation.
• Photographs objects and prepares image files and coordinates with division curator and Museum Registrar on each incoming accession.

• Coordinates all aspects of collections care, use, and access, ensuring overall safety, preservation, maintenance, and documentation of items in the Clothing & Textiles and History collections.
• Researches collections items, including but not limited to bibliography development, identification and cataloging, provenance, care methodologies, object condition, exhibit content and design.
• Facilitates periodic inventories of the collections and pursues needed updates and corrections to cataloging and database records or preventive conservation.
• Maintains paper and electronic collections records and monitors for accuracy, including documenting temporary situations, facilitating database improvements, and conducting regular data backups.
• Monitors and maintains multiple collection spaces, including cleanliness, organization, supplies, and monitoring of environmental conditions, risks, and infestation; coordinates needs with Museum Operations Division.
• Supervises object access and responds to requests.
• Assists with conducting environmental monitoring in collections rooms and maintains relevant records.  

• Coordinates all Curator-approved loans with the Registrar and monitors incoming and outgoing loans to each division.
• Completes condition reports and loan inventories.

• Collaborates on exhibition and program logistics, including object preparation, display requirements, movement, documentation, and condition monitoring while on view.
• Coordinates with the curator and Exhibits Division staff regarding the movement of objects between collections storage or work rooms and exhibit galleries.

• Assist with conducting environmental monitoring in the collections rooms and maintain the records.  
• Maintain divisional infestation reports.

• Proven experience using best practices in collections management.
• Knowledge and practical application skills for preventive conservation and collections care.
• Attention to detail and high level of accuracy.
• Knowledge of collections database software.
• Knowledge and understanding of procedures relating to accessioning and deaccessioning, found-in-collections objects, and abandoned loans.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, both written and verbal.
• Proven experience with project management, supervision, and decision making.

• Assists with training and supervising student employees and volunteers in collection-related work.
• Serves in a public facing role as needed and may stand in for curator during absence, including at events and public programs.
• Travels to transport objects locally and regionally as required.
• Other duties as assigned.

A free, public museum, the Museum of Texas Tech University is a diverse and multidisciplinary institution comprised of Anthropology, Art, Clothing and Textiles, History, Paleontology, Natural History, and 9.5 million objects. The Museum is over 200,000 square feet and features nine permanent galleries ranging from 20th and 21st-century art and southwest Indian art to the study of Biodiversity and the Ice Age to a diverse collection of dinosaurs to history. An additional 10 rotating galleries offer a culmination of exhibitions curated from the Museum’s collections and curators and traveling exhibits from around the world.

The Museum was founded in 1929 as the West Texas Museum, just four years after the creation of what was then known as Texas Technological College (later changed to Texas Tech University). The Museum was built on Texas Tech University's campus near Memorial Circle where nationally known painter Peter Hurd was selected to paint a 1,300 square foot mural in the Museum's rotunda. In April of 1953 the Museum purchased the first Spitz Planetarium. At the 35th Annual Meeting of the West Texas Museum Association on November 5, 1964, plans were revealed for construction of a new museum complex on a several acre tract at Fourth Street and Indiana Avenue. Six years later on November 14, 1970, the Museum opened at it's new and current location.