Chapter 17 - The development of documentation procedures in the City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

Abstract

This chapter describes the development of documentation procedures in the City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. The documentation procedures used by the museum today are generally attributed to Herbert Bolton, appointed as curator in 1898 and as the museum's first director in 1911. The differences in procedure between the museum and the art gallery are because of their separate origins. Virtually, all the specimens in the museum have been handled, classified and stored at some time and may have a variety of numbers inscribed upon them or on associated documents. Much information can exist about the specimens, either directly associated with them or in related historical files and sectional collections of manuscripts. This spread between sources means that data can become divorced from the specimens and occasionally important specimens may be overlooked within the collections. A degree of inadequacy or incompleteness in the documentation of collections must occur in all museums but the problem created unexpected repercussions at Bristol.