Every year since the museum opened in 1977, the Sooke Region Museum has received thousands of items from community members. It may be a bit of a mystery to what goes on behind the doors regarding the items. Recently, on September 17 when the museum hosted its open house, the collections team conducted tours in our processing and storage spaces. If you were not lucky enough to see inside the spaces, I will explain the process of what happens to an item when it is donated.
Donations of items are core to the ability of museums to interpret and present history. All donations aid the museum in being able to tell the history of the Sooke Region to the locals and tourists who come through our doors. For the museum to receive and process a donation, there are many steps to ensure thorough documentation. Whenever an item is brought in, we require every donor to read and sign a receipt which acknowledges the transfer of the legal title over to the museum. If we miss this step, the museum cannot do anything with the item.
Once the initial paperwork is completed, the collections team will process the donations. This includes two main steps: accessioning and cataloguing. Accessioning is what happens when we record the new donation and add it to our system. Part of the thorough documentation is recording this information in multiple areas. One area is the paper receipt and a master list for the current year for all donations that have come in. This notes the date, donor, who accepted it and whether it is an artefact or an archival donation. We also give the item(s) an accession number. This number could look like 2022.017. The “2022” is the year it is donated in and the “017” tells us it’s the 17th donation of the year. This number will stick to the item(s) for the rest of its life in the museum.
After accessioning, we will catalogue the item(s). This includes taking photos, writing descriptions, labelling, and putting them into storage. All together this takes about 4-5 hours per item. When we label items, we will physically put the object identification (OID) onto the item. OIDs look like 2022.017.001. The first two parts of the number is the accession number, while the last part “001” is what item is in the donation.
The last step is all the information will be transferred to a digital record in our collections management software. This is where we store the donor’s information, the photos, and descriptions for all donations in the museum. We also note the location of where the item is in the museum and the condition. It is always important to update these records, so we know where the item(s) are, the history behind them and any additional information we need to know.
