We will be moving the majority of our collection to a new storage building and at that time will be completing new inventories/location guides. I am wondering how does your institution keep track of locations? I am hoping to find a way to simplify our system.

Currently we have handwritten location guides on each shelf and copies in two sets of binders in two different locations, as well as locations in PastPerfect. We end up writing this information down 4 times (on the shelf, on a form to remind us to change the info in the binders and again in two sets of binders) and imputing it into the computer once. We have come across problems in the past of location changes being noted in one or two places but not all four. This of course makes our information unreliable. I understand the need to back up your back up so to speak but writing down accession numbers and locations 4-5 times per item gives ample opportunity to forget to update something or transpose numbers, etc. Is there somewhere/someway we can simplify things while still keeping back ups? Or should we continue to do what we do and hope for the best?

We will be writing things down once and making photocopies for the binders when we do the new locations but my concern is after that when we are back to the day to day operation of adding or removing things here or there.

I should also mention that we have 60,000+ objects of all shapes and size.

Feel free to contact me on or off list. Thank you all for any suggestions you can offer.


Mandy Langfald
Curator of Collection
Wyoming State Museum
307-777-7033
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