A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place: Conducting (and Maintaining!) a Collection Inventory

Inventory
Webinar 4

Is each and every item in your institution’s collection identified, documented, and “locatable”? If so, congratulations: you needn’t read any further. But if not, you are far from alone.

Even though the creation and maintenance of a reliable, accurate, and up-to-date inventory is fundamental to the mission of any collecting institution and underpins all of its day-to-day operations, this admittedly Sisyphean task often falls into the category of as-time-permits.

This webinar will make the case for why we must push inventory back to the top of our priority list, and will address:

  • What is an inventory anyway?
  • Common obstacles to getting started
  • Strategies for building institutional support
  • Where to start (or: Planning, Planning, and Planning)
  • How to do it?
  • Maintaining momentum

Collecting institutions have unique collections, missions, staffing levels, and cultures. We will not offer a one-size-fits-all strategy but will introduce participants to the overarching policies and general procedures that all good inventories have in common.
maureen-mccormick
Maureen McCormick has worked in the museum and fine art field for longer than she cares to admit. Most recently she was Chief Registrar and Manager of Collection Services at the Princeton University Art Museum for more than twenty years, and is currently Director of Registration Services at Atelier Art Storage, Philadelphia. She is the author of Chapter 51, Inventory, in MRM5: Museum Registration Methods 5th Edition. Maureen holds and MFA from the Tyler School of Art of Temple University, and when she is not organizing other people’s art objects she paints icons in the Russian-Byzantine style.

 

Recorded: Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Duration: 1 Hour 24 minutes

Listen

 

Inventories Handout

 

PowerPoint on Inventories

 

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