Unfolding Margaret Maclean's Orihon-Format scrapbook in the Royal Ontario Museum Collection: a focus on context, preservation and access

My thesis comprises the analysis, cataloguing and preservation of Canadian author and educator Margaret MacLean’s Japan Scrapbook at The Royal Ontario Museum. This project uses collections management strategies to describe the scrapbook at the item-level, catalog 597 printed photographs and images for upload to The Museum System database (TMS); attempts to decode the author’s compilation and editorial process and finally, make recommendations for suitable handling procedures for access and physical preservation. The objects are affixed onto a large-format, traditional, Japanese, accordion-bound, album-style book called orihon. Together they capture a moment in Japanese history and visual culture in the first decade of the 20th century, and foreshadow MacLean’s 1920s education work at The ROM. The scrapbook was compiled sometime between 1904 and 1928, using materials ranging from about 1880 to 1915, illustrating the 1904 to 1908 period when Margaret Maclean and her father resided in Yokohama, Japan.