[BCMA] ISO resources/guidelines for moving a museum collection

Wed Apr 13 10:07:57 PDT 2016

HI Laura-I managed the Maritime Museum of BC's collections move last year. The resources I found the most valuable were:
1. The Science Museum of Minnesota's guide entitled "Moving the Mountain."  You can download it free from the link below.  It covers a museum move from the planning and grant writing stage through every bump and turn they took in moving their very large collection. Some of it wasn't applicable to our limited budget / short timeline situation but in general, it's written with humour and sound advice.  They also used lots of volunteers in their move (which is sometimes unusual for big museums) but obviously the MMBC heavily relied on volunteers - we could not have accomplished this major task without them!!! 

Moving the Museum

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Moving the Museum
 How do you move 1.75 million artifacts and specimens? Very carefully, and with a lot of help!  |   |

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2. There are also a lot of great videos on youtube that go into detail regarding a collection move.  One of the best is from the National Museum of the American Indian.  Again, it's written from the point of view of a large, well-endowed museum, but it may be good to show your Board, volunteers and other colleagues, so people can get a sense of how complex and how carefully museum moves need to be! 

Moving the Collections | National Museum of the American Indian

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Moving the Collections | National Museum of the American Indian
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3.  If you do have time to write grants, you should consider the MAP grant (Museum Assistance Program for Collections) through Canada Heritage.  My former colleague and I wrote one and received $55,000 to purchase new museum-quality shelving for our off-site storage facility.  It was a true saving grace for our situation, as we had very little funds dedicated to this move.
Museums Assistance Program - Collections Management

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Museums Assistance Program - Collections Management
 Museums associations and incorporated non-profit Canadian service organizations whose membership relates to the ...  |   |

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Anyway - if you have any questions, or if you want copies of our artifact move worksheets and volunteer training plan, or if you ever want to chat over the phone, let me know.
Thanks!
Anissa Paulsenanissa_joy at yahoo.com
(250) 588-6600

      From: Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv. <bcma at lists.vifa.ca>
 To: bcma at lists.vifa.ca 
 Sent: Friday, April 1, 2016 11:50 AM
 Subject: [BCMA] ISO resources/guidelines for moving a museum collection

Dear colleagues,  We're moving our artifact collection to a new storage facility and I am having difficulty finding any resources, guidelines, and/or a plan as to how to go about it. Does anyone have any experience moving a museum collection that they could share with me? I would appreciate any advice or resources to help with this process.   Thank you,  Laura  Laura Fortier, MASArchivist and Collections ManagerTouchstones Nelson Museum of Art and History502 Vernon StreetNelson, BC V1L 4E7250-352-8268touchstonesnelson.ca  
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