What is Digital Curation in Museum - Part 2
How do museums manage their collections?
My experience working with collection management
From April and June this year, I got an opportunity to work as an internship at the Islington Museum. The museum is a public museum dedicated to the history of the London Borough of Islington (Wikipedia, 2019). Islington Museum has a wide range of collections that are related to the buildings, businesses and organisations that once existed in this area, or people who once lived here. My job is to update the accession registration records for their collection management system and also do some documentation of paper files.
As Roz Currie, the curator of Islington Museum, said, the museum has a long history using paper records for object accession registration from 2008 when the museum was set up. They collect basic information including owner (donor) personal information and description of the collection. We all know that there are many limitations in paper records. For example, there may not be enough space to add or modify the content; it would be very difficult to find a specific record. Therefore, from 2015, the museum gradually began to use the database recommended by Collection
Trust to update and manage the information.
It is obvious that if the museum can add as much information as possible to the object, it will be more conducive to the classification and use of the collection in the future. This database system not only provides powerful editing and retrieval tools, but also simplifies the work of museum staff. It also provides a variety of file format export and multi-port access functions, which makes the data accessible within and between organisations.
What is Museum Collection Management?
In theory, collection management encompasses a series of processes and aspects of the museum's operation of the collection. From decisions and acquisition of which objects to collect, store and preservation of physical and virtual collections, to make them available for the public through exhibitions and online resources. In a word, collection management is about knowing what you have and where they are.
A brief history
In the early stages of the rise of private collections, there was no existence of “collection management.” Collectors may own a list of private collections with the necessary information of each object, such as provenance, description, and so on. By the end of the 16th century, published catalogues of the personal collection began to appear, which at the time was seen as a symbol of social status. With the development of public museums in the mid-18th century, the early inventory of collections was created to help manage the assets of museums. Therefore, index cards listed with basic information, such as descriptions and author names, became the museum's most initial collection management system (it is worth noting that the price of the collection was often marked on the card).
Around the 19th century, collection records and registrations became commonplace. However, the index cards of the collection were used to be kept and managed by the responsible curator. Here is the thing, there is no unified terminology standard among the different departments of the museum. Different curators of each department may use different indexing system, therefore a single piece of information sometimes could be unequal and confusing. Until the mid-20th century, the large museums in the United States began to establish a unified internal record keeping system and created the position of the museum registrar to catalogue and manage the museum collection. The term “collection management” is used in this context in the literature and work guidelines.
Fundamental
There are six processes of museum collection management:
【Documentation】
The documentation of the museum is mainly about collecting, managing, and maintenance of the collection information. Collection information is vital evidence to support its cultural and financial value, so museums need to ensure that the collections they collect are systematically registered and recorded. Documentation exists in almost all aspects of museum collection management – because no matter what kind of collection is used or moved, you should consider whether you need to update the information. For example, before the collection is loaded, the museum carefully checks the necessary information and conditional reports to support the risk assessment of the movement of the object and to provide evidence for the insurance work of the collection.
【Movement】
Museums often have to photograph, lend, or display their collections, requiring collections to move in indoor spaces or external spaces. Before making a decision, the museum must first consider the need for the movement of the collection, prepare the equipment needed for the operation, follow the appropriate procedures, and evaluate the safety and security of environment to minimise the risk.
【Storage】
The museum's storage should not only consider the storage characteristics of the collection itself (such as collections with hazardous substances, Integrated pest management (IPM), etc.), but also the safe and secure environment in which the collection is located, as well as the design of scientific and rational storage systems. So that curators can find it faster and faster according to specific classification criteria.
【Acquisitions and Loans】
The acquisition means receiving a new object and keep it into collections of the museum. Lending objects is a common way for museums who do not own it to support their display and research. Before that, museums should check the legal and ethical requirements of what they are going to take over. And then, documentation is ready to catalogue the objects and update their database.
【Access】
The ultimate goal of museum collection management is to be able to open the physical and virtual access to the collection through multiple media so that researchers and the public can benefit from it. Otherwise, the previous work will lose its meaning. Exhibitions are the most publicly acceptable way to learn about and experience culture and history. Besides, with the development of digital communication technology, many museums provide an online retrieval system for collections of cultural relics. For example, the V&A Museum's Search the Collections project, which is an online database containing access to over a million catalogue records and over half a million images of objects in their collections. The user can retrieve not only the entity information and description of the collection but also query the current location to DIY their visit routes.