As another colleague noted in this thread, organization and documentation are the keys to a successful move. In advance, you must know what you are going to do and how you are going to do it. You want to be so well prepared that when the time comes to move, you simply move according to the schedule you set. If you hire people to help you move, they are likely to have their own ideas on how it should be done. That can be useful (depending on who they are), but in the end, it’s your responsibility to make sure everything goes according to plan. That means that you are in charge and anyone who helps needs to know that. When we moved to our new buildings 11 years ago, we preplanned for months. I was in charge of moving the Natural History collections so I had to make sure that everything was ready to go on moving day. We spent months packing specimens and placing them in locations where they could be moved quickly and efficiently. We bought hundreds of boxes, as well as numerous rolls of bubble wrap, ethafoam, etc. We also used a local mover and took about 6 weeks to move hundreds of thousands of bones, fossils, rocks, minerals, archaeological specimens, biology collections, etc. We even used our volunteers to ride on buses, each carrying individual birds, or other mounted specimens. We made dozens of trips through downtown over the course of 6 weeks. It took a long time, but the preplanning worked and in the end, we had no losses and very little damage. One other point. It was suggested that we inventory everything before the move and after, just to make sure. But we inventoried only after the move was complete because it made no sense to do so beforehand. We already knew what we had. Be prepared, stick to your schedule, but be flexible enough to solve any problems that arise. And problems will arise.
Jeff Tenuth
Natural History Collection Manager
Indiana State Museum
650 W. Washington St.
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Good afternoon everyone,
So my organization has had the good fortune to obtain some funding to build a new larger space for our collections. I will begin planning an object move for this summer and I would love some advice on the best plan of action. There are a few hiccups. First the room will not be completed for at least 60-90 days. The problem here lies in that the collections must be moved from their current location into the new storage by the end of June 2013 because we are installing a simulator and need the space for the computer system. This leaves me only about a month and a half to move the collections. It's a fairly small collection and consist of a few thousand items. Most of the collection is archival materials but we do have a variety of artifacts that range from uniform to engine parts.
Does anyone have any advice on how I can best prepare for the move so I can get it finished as quickly and efficiently as possible? I will most likely have volunteers and interns to assist with this project. There is also a possibility to hire a few contract positions but this is not 100%. I ewould appreciate any wisdom that you all can share with me.
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Megan Geurts
Curator of Collections
National Airline History Museum