Connecting Collecting - Sveriges Museer

The Pool for Manufacture and ServicesAt Volvo Construction Equipment.Photo Roy Cassé©Västmanland CountyMuseum.In the realm of goldThe field seminar in autumn 2005 wasabout a highly topical subject: mining.Rising prices for gold and other mineralshave led to constant expansion in prospectingand mining.The host for the pool’s field seminarin Västerbotten was Skellefteå Museum,which had arranged a varied programmewith study trips to the museum, fieldworkat the Björkdal mine, a guided tourof Bergrum Boliden – Boliden’s museumof mining and minerals, pleasant lunches,dinners, and overnight stays in anarea which has now become a part of theregion’s tourist and experience industryand which is marketed in English underthe name “Gold of Lapland”. Staff at themuseum also produced reading materialfor the seminar participants.The programme began with a showingof the exhibitions in SkellefteåMuseum. We spent the afternoon inthe Björkdal mine, where the operationswere presented. It was a study tripthat the group made to get an idea ofthe work in the mine. On the followingmorning we met the managementof the mine and then did interviewswith employees. The interviews weretape-recorded and transcribed when themembers of the pool had returned hometo their own workplaces. The transcribedinterviews with contextual details werethen sent to the host museum, whichthus acquired a corpus of complete newmaterial for its archive.at Volvo, who told us about VCE as acompany. Then Professor Gösta Arvastsonfrom the Department of Anthropologyand Ethnology at Uppsala Universitylectured about his research on workersat Volvo and other vehicle industries.The day ended with a discussion basedon our impressions of what we had seenand heard during the lectures and companypresentation.The second day was devoted to fieldwork.We worked in groups of two orthree persons and each group chose foritself which themes and questions towork with. The group also had to thinkof suggestions as to artefacts to acquire.The actual fieldwork consisted chiefly ofinterviews with pre-selected informantsfrom different parts of the company andto a certain extent also of photographicdocumentation, observation, and fieldnotes.On the third and last day the groupspresented their fieldwork and discussedthe experience gained during the fieldwork,both new knowledge about workat Volvo and also the method itself.New questions popped up duringthe fieldwork and were reflected in thereports. The relatively new principle “sellone – make one” and the new organizationin which former departments werenow outsourced companies entailed newways of working. The increased computerizationalso led to changes in thework. Today there are totally new requirementsfor all employees to be ableto read and write Swedish and English,and it is no longer just a matter of workingwith one’s hands.An important networkDocumenting manufacture and servicesis a current issue for many Swedish museumsboth at the national level and onthe regional and local levels. The pooltherefore has a large number of members,even if they have not all been ableto work as actively with this as theywould have wished. The field seminarsare highly appreciated as occasions forthe pool members to meet and togetherelaborate on matters concerning bothcontent and method. In their day-to-daywork the members of the pool are occupiedwith many different tasks and arenot infrequently alone in doing Samdokstudies within the framework of their respectivemuseums. The pool meetings arethus an opportunity for the members tolearn from each other’s experience. pCarin Andersson is antiquarian at EskilstunaCity Museum, carin.andersson@eskilstuna.seAnn Kristin Carlström was formerly head ofresearch at the Museum of Work and is nowdirector of Skoklosterannkristin.carlstrom@lsh.seCharlotte Åkerman is antiquarian at Kulturenin Lund and chair of the pool for Manufactureand Services,charlotte.akerman@kulturen.comSamtid & museer no 2/07 • 17