Case study
Bristol's Museums, Galleries and Archives Inventory Project
In Spring 2005 Bristol's Museums, Galleries and Archives appointed four documentation assistants
to work on retrospective documentation. In the first six months they created over 12,000 object
records. The Documentation Assistants are carrying out inventories for four areas of the collection:


Egypt: approximately 11,000 items. The plan is to finish the inventory by 2008.
Social History: approximately 40,000 items. These are documented manual but with no
location information. The plan is to transfer this information to computer and carry out an
inventory. This work is planned to take 3 years.
 Archaeology: approximately half a million items. As these are mainly from site archives the inventory
will be carried out at archive level. The inventories is planned to be 90% complete in 3 years.
 Biology: approximately half a million items. This work will take longer than other collection
areas as information needs to be more carefully checked.
Planning
There is an inventory plan for each area of the collection and plans for subsections of the
collections. The plans take into account the resources available and what can realistically be
achieved in the time available. The following factors are taken into account:
 What is already known about the collection, particularly the curator's knowledge
 Whether the collection is accessioned
 Whether there are catalogue records
 Whether marking or labelling is needed
 Previous experience
 Storage conditions and accessibility of the collection
The average for the inventory is 30-50 objects a day. Curators and Assistant Curators are tasked
with 7 hours a week for documentation - not just inventory work, but new acquisitions, loans etc.
Documentation Assistants work full time on the inventory.
Inventory Plans
The example inventory plans are for the archaeology collection and the Fawcett collection, a
section of it:
 Archaeology Collection Inventory Plan
 Fawcett Collection Project Plan
Timings
The Fawcett collection is very easy to inventory. It is stored in typological order, so, for example, all
the Roman brooches are together and all the flint arrowheads are together. The collection has
come from a single collector so all the acquisition information is the same for each object. Both
these factors mean that database records can be cloned during data entry. It is therefore much
easier to achieve 50 objects a day, often more and on occasion rising to 100.
The Biology Collection inventory is more complex due to loss of collections during an air raid on
Bristol in 1940, large collections of specimens not marked or labelled and other factors.
Reconciliation of specimens with any accession number or record is more problematic. The work
on the Biology collection on average achieves 30 specimens a day.
For the Egyptology collection, the way in which objects are stored and their fragile nature also limits
the number of items that can be inventories in a day. In Egyptology the average is 40 objects a day.
The inventory work is on schedule for the Biology and Egyptology inventories and ahead of
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schedule for British Archaeology.
Contact Details:
Organisation: Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery
Address: Queen's Road, Bristol, BS8 1RL
Contact: Gareth Salway, Collections Officer (Information Systems)
Telephone: 0117 922 3571
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