To collect: v.t. to gather together, especially in accordance with a principle of selection
Collecting anything - autographs, rocks, photographs, postcards, political buttons - is a process that requires choices about what to include and what not to include. Gathering and then saving things reflect a sense of history - an awareness of how objects provide meaningful, memorable, and tangible symbols and insights into past experiences.
Collections should be defined by a distinct sense of purpose and an organizing framework, where the sum exceeds the parts. The objects that make up a collection communicate and embody stories. They provide tangible and physical evidence of events, relationships, and experiences. Objects a person makes, owns, uses or gives to others can represent his or her own life as well as represent relationships with friends, family, or organizations. Objects preserve not just a generalized sense of history, but also the specific individual stories and experiences. They put a personal face on history.
In a little over a century of Nikkei history, objects have already proven important in capturing the past. Unfortunately, objects are prone to being damaged or lost. As a member of a community, an organization, or a family, you can help capture the legacy of your forebears by preserving objects and giving voice to them. Here we explore the example of the Japanese American National Museum and Japanese American history, but many of these concepts, approaches, and methods are readily applicable to other individuals or community groups.
Discovering New Objects
Significant objects may come from such varied sources as an organization's file cabinets, a family's attic, or an art dealer. It is important to remember that these can be valuable historical or artistic materials, so the care and handling of them is important. What you may throw out as old and useless could turn out to be valuable. Fifty years or a century later, for example, it could tell important stories to future generations. How, why, and to whom objects are significant varies depending upon the meanings, stories, and associations assigned to them. See How to preserve your own history
Gathering the Story
Recording personal and historical information about the objects in a collection is an important first step. Objects can have many levels of meaning and simultaneously embody multiple stories. Typically, one starts by asking broad, generic questions, such as: How was it used and by whom? Where was it made or acquired and by whom? Why? How old is it? What is it made of? Obviously, some of these questions can be answered by visually assessing the object in question.
The next level of questions focuses on particular and personal meanings. What did it mean to you? Are there stories associated with it? Why did you keep it? How does it relate to other objects? What is the biography of its maker/owner?
See How to conduct your own video or audio interviews .
The final stage of gathering stories is to consider other narratives or contexts of similar objects by consulting related resources such as books, other collections, oral or life histories, etc.
See our Directory of Nikkei collections