know.

CookbookTeaching and coursesNo. 22

A docent tour bookobject stories by gallery, read on a phone between tours

Recipe No. 22 · Teaching and courses

For: A coordinator training docents for a new exhibition

You get: A tour book: a page per object, with its story and what visitors ask

Time: Two or three evenings before training

See it in know.sh

The Gallery 2 training deck: five slides in four layouts, with speaker notes, written from the checked pages only.

A gallery as a document: the route in the overview, then the objects in walking order. The apron is still a Question, so it stays off the docents’ link.

know., Gallery 2 · Look up, New, ⋯

Millrace, No. 52

Gallery 2 — The weave room

9 sections, 3,480 words, about 15 minutes, filed 22 September, revised 9 October, 5 highlights, shared.

☆ Star, Focus, Share, Move, Edit

The weave room gallery sets a row of looms against a recording of the noise that filled the real room. Visitors enter under the belt drive; stop first at the Northrop loom, because every question in this gallery starts there.

Route: the loom, the time clock, the case of shuttles and bobbins, then the pay records. Allow eight minutes. The loom recording plays every ten minutes; let it finish before you speak.

Sections

  1. Northrop automatic loom, about 1905 (Evidence, key). Accession 1987.14. The loom that let one weaver tend twenty. Do not say it was built in the valley; it came from Massachusetts. (highlighted)
  2. Time clock from the Upper Mill (Evidence, key, 1 note). Accession 1991.3.2. Hands punched in at 6:20 and the gate shut at 6:30. Visitors always ask what happened if you were late.
  3. Shuttles and bobbins case (Evidence). “Kissing the shuttle”: weavers drew the thread through the eye by mouth. The detail children remember.
  4. Pay records, 1898–1903 (Evidence, 2 notes). On loan from the Blackwater County Archives. Do not read names aloud from the ledgers; the lender’s terms are on this page. (highlighted)
  5. Weaver’s apron, donated 2019 (Question). Waiting for the curator: the family dates it to 1903, but the fabric may be later.

and 4 more sections

The same gallery on a docent’s phone: eight checked objects, the apron left out, and none of the coordinator’s notes.

app.dev.know.sh/share/…, Read only

Gallery 2 — The weave room

Shared from a library on know. 8 sections.

The weave room gallery sets a row of looms against a recording of the noise that filled the real room. Visitors enter under the belt drive; stop first at the Northrop loom, because every question in this gallery starts there.

Route: the loom, the time clock, the case of shuttles and bobbins, then the pay records. Allow eight minutes. The loom recording plays every ten minutes; let it finish before you speak.

Sections

  1. Northrop automatic loom, about 1905 (Evidence, high importance)
  2. Time clock from the Upper Mill (Evidence, high importance)
  3. Shuttles and bobbins case (Evidence, medium importance)
  4. Pay records, 1898–1903 (Evidence, medium importance)
  5. Belt drive and line shaft (Evidence, medium importance)
  6. Doffer’s bench (Evidence, medium importance)
  7. Mill whistle (Evidence, low importance)
  8. Cloth samples from the 1903 order book (Evidence, low importance)

How it works

Turn the exhibition’s object list into a tour book docents carry in their pockets. Each gallery is a document, each object a page with its accession number, key facts, a story you can tell in a minute and the questions visitors ask. A correction you make on Tuesday is on every docent’s phone by Wednesday.

  1. Build the galleries from the object list

    Give your assistant the object list and label copy, and ask for a Millrace shelf with a document per gallery and a section per object, in the order visitors meet them.

  2. Give every object the same page

    Each page gets the accession number, key facts, the story, the questions visitors ask, and Do not say: the versions visitors love that the curator’s files do not support.

  3. Sign off with the curator, then share

    Go through each gallery with the curator and record every sign-off in a margin note. Share each gallery behind a password, leaving out any object still waiting to be checked.

  4. Ask for a training deck

    For training day, ask your assistant for a slide show element per gallery, five slides at most, written only from checked pages, with speaker notes under each slide.

Try this prompt

Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model):

Using know.sh, read “Gallery 2 — The weave room” on my Millrace shelf and make a document called “Docent training — Gallery 2” with a slide show element in its overview, five slides at most, from Evidence pages only: a title, the route, one figure to remember, every Do not say line, and what to do after a shift. Add speaker notes under each slide.

Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model):

Using know.sh, make a shelf called “Millrace” with one document per gallery from the object list and label copy I have given you. Add a section per object in list order, titled by its label title, with five headings: Accession number and label title, Key facts, The story, Questions visitors ask, Do not say. Fill only the first two, and file every object as a Question.

Made with

ShelfDocumentYour AI assistantElementsMargin notesPublic link