A Moving Experience: Thirteen Years and Two Million Objects Later
Greta Hansen, Catherine Zwiesler Sawdey · Curator The Museum Journal · 1999
ABSTRACT The Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution began preparing and moving its ethnographic and archeological collections, consisting of two million specimens, to an off‐site storage facility in 1983. The move was necessitated by continual museum accessions and diminishing available storage space, resulting in overcrowded conditions. Thirteen years later, the anthropology move is nearing completion. This article documents some of the circumstances that precipitated the collection move. It also delineates the procedures that evolved and some of the lessons learned. Experience showed that adequate training of staff was essential to the success of the project. Bar code technology was implemented to streamline tracking of objects and inventory control. With the completion of the anthropology move, the collections care is significantly improved on many levels, but challenges lie ahead because the new storage facility is nearing capacity.