John's right: the sooner you can get that wood split down to wedges and get the ends sealed the better. I've used a couple of coats of latex paint to seal wood like that, and it works fine: it doesn't have to be water proof, it just has to equilize the moisture loss to be about the same as the side grain. Remove all the bark, and square stack the wedges (alternate layers crossing) to minimize the contact surface and maximize air flow. Cover the top of the stack to keep rain out, but leave the sides open. You'll want to turn the pile in a week or so, checking for signs of mold and end checking, and getting the the wood from the bottom on the top.
Once the wood is dry you can make some test strips and check the properties. A vibration test by tapping is easy to do, and if you know the dimensions and the weight of the piece, along with the fundamental resonant pitch, you can calculate the Young's modulus and damping. The averages you see in the literature are useful as far as they go, and great for designing structural frames, but there's enough variation in properties from one piece to another that it's better to measure for our purposes.
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