The Museum Catalogue: An Essential Document

Inventory systems, or catalogues, are essential to the fundamental success of museums. Every museum strives to maintain a complete and accurate catalogue of its collection. This desire is not always achieved as the day to day responsibilities of the registrar detract from time spent on updating the catalogue.

The catalogue acts as an inventory system, providing the museum with a complete list of what it hold in the collection. The lack of a complete catalogue is unfortunate because “in addition to facilitating the improvement of research, documentation, and storage, an ongoing inventory system can be an essential security device.” (Malaro, Marie. A legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections) The catalogue provides a secure source of information on every object held within the museum. This information includes, but is not limited to, the object’s location within the museum and a detailed history and description of the object. This information helps the museum recognize when a theft has occurred and can be used by authorities to locate and recover the stolen objects. An ambiguous description can help authorities locate objects to an extent, but without a fully detailed description the museum may never be able to prove rightful ownership and recover these pieces.

As personnel change, knowledge of objects is lost unless it is recorded in a catalogue. Museums are constantly adding to their collections. Between new additions and changing personnel it becomes difficult to complete all categories within a catalogue for each object.

A typical catalogue will answer the following questions about an object: What type of object is it? What is the object made of? How was it made? How big is it? Does it have any identifying markings or distinguishing features? Does the object have a known title? What is represented? When was it made? Who made it? Who has owned it? The typical catalogue will also have a short description and photograph. When these questions are answered and recorded the security of a collection is improved exponentially.