This is a response to the news story about space for curation... I think the
folks at TARL would love it!

-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 3:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Fwd: LA Times Story (Fight for space)


Fighting for space is always a problem for small departments or new
programs. I once saved half our space in similar military buildings by using
some specimens from our defleshing area.  Well to make it short I put the
material in the lab and turn off the air conditioning.  When the space
allocation team arrived, the room smelled so bad that they let us keep it!

Hey we were not using the space but we were not giving up.  In month or two
it was nice and musty again.


Dan Hughes
-- Anita Cohen-Williams <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Forwarded with permission.


>Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 11:07:30 -0800
>From: Ruben Mendoza <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Fwd: LA Times Story
>
>Dear All,
>
>         The following story appeared in the LA Times over the
> weekend.  Thought
>you'd appreciate the way that archaeology often receives short shrift in
>the way lab space is allocated based on FTE, by comparison with the
>so-called "hard sciences," at our campus.  What the reporter did not
>mention was that the university just dedicated a $50 million dollar
>Science building...and of course, despite open lab spaces in that
>building, archaeology is not on the list of prospects for space use in
>that building either.  In the meantime, my students and I continue to work
>with the collections for the purposes of teaching, learning, and
>publication.
>
>Regards, Ruben Mendoza
>
>-------------------------------------------
>
>College Is Short on Space for Mission History
>Cal State Monterey Bay has no permanent home for findings from digs at two
>Spanish churches dating to the 1700s.
>
>By Irwin Speizer
>Special to The Times
>
>November 23, 2003
>
>MONTEREY, Calif. - One day last month, Ruben Mendoza, an archeology
>professor at Cal State Monterey Bay, flipped the light switch in the
>former Army mail and recreation building that he uses to store thousands
>of artifacts from two Spanish missions.
>
>Nothing happened.
>
>The university cut electricity to the one-story building after a
>transformer blew, deciding that the entire circuit was too decayed to
>warrant repairs any time soon. That left Mendoza and his mission
>collection in the dark and surrounded by abandoned, three-story former
>Army dormitories, all ripe for vandalism.
>
>Since he and his students started digging eight years ago, Mendoza has
>moved six times in his quest for space to house the thousands of bags and
>boxes of tiles, bricks, bones and other artifacts collected from Mission
>San Juan Bautista and Mission San Carlos Borromeo in Carmel. This month,
>he got notice of move No. 7, to yet another old former Army building on
>campus.
>
>"These are the first collections of their kind for these two missions,"
>Mendoza said. "I've created a scientific collection that could be studied
>for years. But how long can I continue to do this before I find it
>necessary to rebury it all?"
>
>The university and the Catholic Diocese of Monterey say Mendoza is doing
>important work in historical research and student instruction. But finding
>a permanent home for even a unique collection of historical artifacts is a
>struggle at the college, a campus carved out of the former Ft. Ord base in
>1995.
>
>The abandoned Army buildings scattered around the 1,365-acre campus have
>many structural and safety problems, including lead paint and asbestos.
>
>"Space is really hard to come by on this campus," said Barbara Mossberg,
>dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, which
>includes Mendoza's archeology program.
>
>As Mossberg tells it, the faculty is in a constant scramble to find room
>for its rapidly expanding student body, now at more than 3,600. Mendoza,
>she says, always has been one of the more creative faculty members -
>landing grants for his digs and finding overlooked buildings to use for
>labs and storage.
>
>But George Baldwin, chairman of the Division of Social, Behavioral and
>Global Studies, which includes the archeology department, says not all
>faculty members and academic sections are treated equally.
>
>Money for operations is doled out according to a formula involving what is
>called full-time equivalent students, Baldwin said. Divisions with classes
>that attract a hundred students or more get more financial resources, he
>says. Mendoza's classes typically run 15 to 18 students.
>
>"Our archeology program is always going to be one of the smallest groups
>of students on campus - a small group providing remarkable service to the
>community," Baldwin said.
>
>Mendoza says he suspects that his outspoken campus activism - he has
>gotten involved in several faculty disputes over the years - also may work
>against him.
>
>University spokeswoman Holly White says the school holds no grudge against
>Mendoza, and in fact holds him in high esteem. "The university is very
>interested in supporting him," White said. "It is a question of how we do
>that. The problem we have is that we have an enormous amount of space and
>not a lot of it we can use without retrofitting."
>
>Mendoza continues to dig, along with his students, and has won grants for
>high-tech equipment. Currently, he is excavating beside one wall of the
>Carmel mission; he believes he has found the entrance to a long-lost wine
>cellar from about 200 years ago. He has surveyed the area with
>ground-penetrating radar to map the likely site.
>
>Each day of the dig, he and his students enter their findings into
>portable computer tablets hooked to an on-site wireless network complete
>with a portable satellite dish, which beams the information to a Web site
>(archaeology.csumb.edu/wireless), all made possible through another grant.
>Last week, he came upon a bayonet he believes may have belonged to one of
>the men commanded by Col. John C. Fremont, who arrived in 1846.
>
>Most of what Mendoza collects are building materials used in the old
>missions and bones from animals slaughtered for meat. Each item is tagged
>and bagged, then cataloged and stored in whatever campus building he can
>find.
>
>"I have given up the idea of hoping for anything better," Mendoza said. "I
>just want to make sure that, when we move, the collections are not moved
>haphazardly."

Anita Cohen-Williams
Search Engine Optimizer/Guru
http://www.mysearchguru.com
"Get Your Web Site Noticed!"

Listowner of HISTARCH, SUB-ARCH, & SPANBORD
Archaeology Online Blog (web log)
http://archaeology.blogspot.com


________________________________________________________________
The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand!
Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER!
Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today!