Caring For Your Collections

Practical, authoritative advice invaluable to anyone who collects.

This volume provides a practical guide to all aspects of collections care including conservation practice, the monitoring of control of light, relative humidity and atmospheric pollution, biological infestation and disaster planning.

Developed by the American Association of Museums with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, this pamphlet explores the most important responsibility of all museums-collections care. More than 65 curators, registrars, and conservators discuss how to improve environmental collections in museums, manage inventory, register objects, and enhance public awareness of museum collection.

Good storage is the foundation of effective collection care, advancing conservation while at the same time promoting accessibility and use. Preventive Conservation: Collection Storage covers the storage of all types of collections, including science, fine and decorative art, history, library, archive, and digital collections. It concentrates on preventive conservation and emphasizes a risk management approach. Reflecting the breadth of its scope, the new book is collaboration between The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections; the American Institute for Conservation of Historic & Artistic Works; the Smithsonian Institution; and the George Washington University Museum Studies Program.

Museum curators enter the profession with a specialist subject qualification and yet at some point in their career, many curators find themselves in charge of a range of collections outside of their expert knowledge. Interpreting, curating and caring for mixed collections demands of curators a wide range of knowledge and understanding. The Curation and Care of Museum Collections is designed to give curators the fundamental information and confidence they need to manage and care for all of the collections within their responsibility, regardless of their previous training and experience. Comprising two sections – Museum Collections, and Collection Development and Care – the chapters cover archaeology, art, history, military and natural sciences collections, as well as heritage properties. Every chapter in the book is focused on one type of collection, but all chapters in the collection management section contain advice on topics such as organisational philosophy, documentation, legal issues and materials in order to provide a useful and comprehensive guide to managing collections. The collection care section is structured in the same way, considering the issues of storage; display; handling; moving; packing; housekeeping; health and safety; emergency preparedness; and pest, pollution, environmental, light and vibration management. The contributors to this book are experienced museum professionals, each with their own specialism and a deep understanding of what it means to work in the context of mixed collections. Providing a highly practical guide, The Curation and Care of Museum Collections is essential reading for curators working in all types of museums, galleries and heritage sites, and for students of museology courses around the world.

Managing previously unmanaged collections can be challenging. The process of securing the collection and making it accessible needs the mindset of a collections manager as well as the one of a project manager. The target audience are museum professionals with a basic training in collections care that are confronted with collections that are either large in numbers (1000+ artifacts) or stored confusingly, or both. The book is a step-by-step guide how to approach this situation, assuming that there's nothing to start with but a collection that has to be accessioned and the person who is assigned to do it. It is about how to bring order into the chaos, to define what is needed in terms of time, money, staff and material, to spot facility issues and potential dangers, and to use the power of networking to solve an otherwise unsolvable task. Many chapters conclude with “logical exits,” the points at which the collection in a condition that allows you to leave it for the next curator to take over. A common issue is that time frames are often so tight that the target of having the collection in good shape at the end of a contract or at a fixed date can’t be met. Another common scenario may be that other projects become more important and you have to stop working on the collection, which might sound familiar to many directors of small museums. “Logical exits” are the points you can do this without risking that everything you’ve done so far or since the last “logical exit” was a waste of time. For contractors those “logical exits” might serve as orientation points when negotiating the work that has to be done on the collection.

Confronting contemporary issues in museum practice, this collection provides a practical guide to all aspects of collections care. Contributors cover a wide range of issues including: conservation practice the monitoring and control of light relative humidity and atmospheric pollution packing, handling and transportation of collections storage and access to collections biological infestation disaster planning. Including material and sources that have, up until now, not easily been available, students of museum studies and proffessionals within the industry now have this invaluable aid to their work.