Managing Architectural Records in the House that Rubber Built: A Case Study in Multi-Disciplinary Collaboration in Museum Archives

Managing architectural records presents a number of challenges, especially in museums and historic sites where a number of disciplines tend to converge. This case study will chronicle the architectural drawings project at Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens in Akron, Ohio that occurred in two phases over a fifteen-year period. It will present the situations that arose and the multi-disciplinary approaches devised to solve them. It also will illustrate how collaboration across several inherently different yet related professions—including archivists, objects curators, and restoration architects—produced the best outcome and how others can apply these methods to address similar projects.