Building a Strategy to Catalog an Entire Museum Collection

In last week’s post we outlined the things to consider when nothing is cataloged. With that foundation, it is time to build your strategy.

Given the unique nature of collections, differences in resources, etc., each person’s strategic approach to this project will vary. Additionally, the strategic approach to cataloging an entire museum collection when nothing is cataloged will look different from routine cataloging. Starting at the beginning is a heavy lift, and one that requires consideration in order to be successful.

Outline Your Strategy to Catalog an Entire Museum Collection

Your strategy outline will include “consideration factors” identified during your work outline in our previous post. It will outline the collection information you have available to you, known resources, and tools available for your work.

Project scope: How many museum objects are in need of a catalog record? Will you take a phased approach? What milestones will you use?

Resources: Which staff and/or volunteer members will be involved? What roles will they take on? What tools are in place and what tools do you need?

Best Practices: Which industry standards have you selected and how do those shape your best practices? What controlled vocabularies will you use?

Once the strategy outline has been determined, you can more easily begin the detailed version of your strategy.

Enter Details in for Your Strategy to Catalog an Entire Museum Collection

Once the outline is in place it’s time to plug the details into your strategy. For each outlined area, populate the details based on what you initially established during the above exercise. I’ve included some fake project details below so you can see the level of detail we’re capturing for our strategy.

Project scope:

How many museum objects are in need of a catalog record? 5,000

Will you take a phased approach? Yes. I’m a lone-arranger and can only set aside 4-hours every Friday afternoon. With that in mind, my goal is to catalog 12-24 knowing that some items may take more research while others can be duplicated for similar items. While this rate will take me 4-years, I hope to get a grant to hire a paid intern to assist.

What milestones will you use? Every 100 cataloged items is cause for celebration. I also plan to gather quarterly and annual statistics on what I’ve accomplished and highlight these achievements to my director and our board.

Resources:

Which staff and/or volunteer members will be involved? For now, it’s just me. I hope to hire a paid intern.

What roles will they take on? The intern will take the role of information gatherer and initial data capture. I will be a data creator and reviewer.

What tools are in place and what tools do you need? We have a spreadsheet to begin with and hope to acquire a Collections Management System (CMS) within the next year. Given the limited staff capacity we will only be cataloging—no anticipated digitization.

Best Practices:

Which industry standards have you selected and how do those shape your best practices? We’ve selected a Dublin Core schema and will follow Cataloging Cultural Objects for guidance on descriptive standards. I’ll create a spreadsheet template with examples to capture the data, especially while we wait for a CMS.

What controlled vocabularies will you use? We’ll begin with Nomenclature and reassess if other controlled terms are needed.

Conclusion

With a strategy in place, you’re on your way to successful project execution. The information you have gathered and decisions you have made thus far will offer a framework for what we cover next: prioritization and batch processing.