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March 25, 2005
Cataloguing Woes
It may surprise some readers to know how much in museum and library storage rooms sits there uncatalogued. The New York Times has an article online about a grant for cataloguing the costume collection at the Brooklyn Museum. Much of the collection has never been photographed or described in detail.
It's an exaggeration (a pardonable one, perhaps) when museum folks say things like "we have no idea what's in storage." Long-time employees usually do have some idea, but often only an idea. A rigorous and thorough cataloguing always turns up things no one had ever noticed that have been sitting on a shelf for 30 years. Conservation also turns up surprises when people look very, very closely at objects and realize they have been misidentified all along.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at March 25, 2005 7:59 AM