Christina,

If your collection numbering system ends with an item number (as in
2002.1.35) you can fairly quickly add up total number of items for each
year, by using the last number in each collection or group, even it you
have taken in a considerable number of collections.  Do that for ten
years or more and get an average.  I was amazed at the total number when
I did that once. Of course the years in which entire estates were
donated really bumped the average, so I made a bar chart from that which
was great to show administrators, Board, etc. and that also gave a feel
for the frequency with which large collections were accepted. There
really was a fairly predictable average over that amount of time.

The only drawback is that this bears only general relationship to the
number of cubic feet needed to store the items. (one tractor vs 50 lapel
pins) But you might be able to make "ballpark" estimates for each
collection just by looking at the accession lists.

Lucy Sperlin
Heritage Management
Chico, CA


Christina Phillips wrote:
>
> Is there a system or method commonly used  to anticipate uncrowding and collection growth?  Would you look at what came in over the past 5-10 years, come up with an average number and go from there?
> My only concern is that sometimes, out of the blue, we are given very large collections (which we never anticpated).  How do you account for these possibilities?
>
> Please feel free to repond off list.
>
> Christina M. Phillips
> New York State Museum

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