Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections by Kipp Angela;

Author:Kipp, Angela; [Kipp, Angela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2016-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Note

1. Bob Beatty, preface to Stewardship: Collections and Historic Preservation, Book 6, Small Museum Toolkit, edited by Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko and Stacy Klingler (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2012), xii.

Chapter Seven

Getting Stuff Done

In chapter 5 we sorted our collection and maybe you sorted it several additional times until you now have it at a stage where you can actually start the accessioning process. It’s a good thing that you’ve dealt with your collection, as this means that you have gotten yourself acquainted with it. You know its strengths and weaknesses and you have a rough idea of how many objects you are dealing with. This knowledge is important, because you have to make some strategic decisions now.

Much is written about the process of accessioning and how to catalog a collection. For a start, read Object Entry Procedure, Acquisition Procedure and Cataloguing Procedure of Spectrum 4.01 and Daniel Reibel’s Registration Methods for the Small Museum.2 While reading this literature will give you a good idea of what’s important in the next step, the material doesn’t relieve you of the duty of considering your current situation and setting up a strategic plan specific to how you’ll approach the documentation process of your collection.3

With the risk of stating the obvious, here are some rules that are inevitable truisms of object documentation:

The more detailed the cataloging, the more time it takes to do it.

The more detailed the cataloging, the more useful it is for research, curating, education, and any other object use.

Objects that are physically there but can not be found in documentation are “invisible” for any object use.

The longer the documentation of a single object takes, the longer it takes until the whole collection is documented and the longer objects stay “invisible.”

It is actually possible to create a completely useless catalog by being too generic and vague in naming objects in favor of saving time or by not cataloging facts that are crucial for further steps in the process. The objects are then “visible”—but still useless.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.