Hi William,

I second the excellent advice of Astrid and Gregory regarding working  
collection by collection instead of shelf by shelf and breaking down  
the huge task in manageable steps.

In addition I would first of all try to spot all possible health  
hazards like taxidermy specimen, fire grenades, live ammunition, moth  
treated textiles, cinema projectors that contain asbestos,... and make  
your working environment safe. In this step, I'd also look out for  
hidden pest infestations, mold or building issues like holes or  
windows that are not tight. In the next step I'd determine which  
collection items suffer the most in the current storage situation and  
start with them.

There's much more to it, I'm curretly putting the finishing touches to  
the manuscript of "Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections - A  
Practical Guide for Museums" which will deal with scenario like yours  
and worse than yours. It should be available in spring 2016 via Rowman  
& Littlefield.

Best wishes
Angela

Angela Kipp
Collection Manager
TECHNOSEUM, Mannheim, Germany
www.technoseum.de

Join the Registrar Trek at http://world.museumsprojekte.de/
Follow us on Twitter @RegistrarTrek


The views expressed are my own. My museum can't be held responsible  
for anything I write.





Quoting Astrid Drew <[log in to unmask]>:

> The historical society I work for hadn't had a fulltime archivist before me,
> and collections were minimally processed if at all before going into
> storage. We recently moved into a building that allowed us to unpack and
> fully address and organize collections, so your e-mail rings a variety bells
> for me.
>
>
>
> You may want to see if there are particular collections that would be of
> interest to the general public or whoever your mission addresses.  If
> inquiry or reference requests have been saved, you may look at those to get
> an idea of what sort of things would be good to prioritize.  If they are
> concise collections (generally physically together, manageable in size), you
> could try getting interns or recent library/archives grads to handle those
> pieces.
>
>
>
> At our historical society, we have many donor files in hard copy but not in
> our database, and there wasn't a consistent labeling process to identify
> items amongst the collections.  So we took the physical files and organized
> them into our database first, and then worked to reconcile items as we found
> them during processing.  This is still happening, it's a long process, so my
> chief words of advice would be to not allow yourself to get overwhelmed.
> Break down the tasks as much as you need, in chunks.  I hope your employers
> appreciate the magnitude (and benefits!) of this work.
>
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Astrid M. Drew
>
>
>
> Steamship Historical Society
>
> 2500 Post Road
>
> Warwick, RI
>
> 02886
>
>  <http://www.sshsa.org> www.sshsa.org
>
> 401-463-3570
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
> Of William Shepherd
> Sent: Monday, November 9, 2015 3:28 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [MUSEUM-L] Collections Audit/Rebirth
>
>
>
> *Apologies for cross posting.*
>
> Hello,
>
>
>
>                 I'm recently started in a new position at a new institution
> managing their collection. My predecessor, while a very nice person, fell
> far behind on management of the collection. I'm seeing about seven years of
> buildup. Everything needs to be rehoused/needs proper storage, virtually
> every database record updated with correct locations and information,
> hundreds or thousands of records entered into the database that are typed
> out in a Word file but not entered into the database, paperwork and
> documentation located and updated, as well as rearranging objects in storage
> areas. The archives collection is in a bit better condition so this will
> only focus on the Museum's mixed physical collection consisting of the usual
> human created items, natural history items, photographs, etc. My guess is
> there is somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 collection items to be dealt
> with.
>
>                 As I'm making a plan to tackle this massive project I'd be
> very interested in hearing from anyone else that has gone through this or a
> similar process. I'm tossing around ideas as I sort through things and of
> course it all depends on available funds, but I'm thinking the only way to
> go is physically shelf by shelf, one by one, try to locate a database or
> Word record, update as necessary and rehouse as necessary, rearrange where
> possible then move on. This is obviously going to be a huge amount of work
> so hopefully I'll come across some funding to get some recent grads but any
> success' and pitfalls others care to share would be much appreciated. Thank
> you.
>
>
>
> William Shepherd
>
> Collections Officer
>
> Swift Current Museum
>
> 44 Robert Street West
>
> Swift Current, Saskatchewan
>
> S9H 4M9
>
> Phone: 306-778-4815
>
> Fax: 306-778-4818
>
>
>
>
>
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