Elephants Never Forget, but Museums Do

Abstract

This article addresses the urgent need for better documentation in museum collections. The stories behind museum objects are being lost every day, as books go out of print and staff members retire; while others never had their story told at all. A step-by-step guide to researching undocumented objects in museum collections is included, with a detailed example using a Greek lekythos in the collections of the National Museum of Natural History. The obstacles to object-level research activities to improve catalog information are discussed. I conclude that documentation is an urgent duty that cannot be kept waiting or we risk complete loss of context. Our museums’ leadership and strategic priorities need transformation in order to make storytelling and access a priority. All staff need to be involved with documentation, and should be empowered to add information to object records. We need to remove the barrier to access, and involve the community in crowd-sourcing history.