Capture and release: cataloguing cultural heritage at Marrickville Library and History Services

Abstract

Marrickville Library and History Services (MLHS) have implemented cataloguing of cultural-heritage material on to their library management system (LMS). This article highlights the reasons why MLHS took this step as part of a larger provenance and significance-assessment process, the procedures they put in place, as well as present and future goals for the project. The article highlights the positive outcomes for provenance, collection management, public access and succession planning that are a consequence of implementing this systematic approach, and suggests steps that may be taken to facilitate this practice in other local-studies collections. Some of the challenges of cataloguing items of unknown origins and unconventional formats are discussed.