Parameters of the project

Some background as to the parameters at the start of the project and changes as the project has continued.

The inventory of the Visual and Material Culture Collections was originally planned as part of a 2-year project, with one work-stream to inventory all printed and published material pre-1851, and the visual material work-stream to look at all visual material with no time parameters for Museum Accreditation. The inventory team comprises four full time members of staff, with two colleagues dedicated to the visual and early printed book formats, and two Collections Assistants working across both work-streams.

The visual inventory will cover all four types of storage locations in the Wellcome Collection and Trust sites at 183 and 215 Euston Road, respectively: The solander store, plan chest store and framed art stores in 183, and the drawers in 183 and the basement of 215. Each storage type has its own letter (S for Solander, P for plan chest, D for drawer and R for racking stores) As each location is unique, it therefore denotes the room in which that location is.

The project began in March 2019 and commenced with the inventory and audit of material within the 'Plan Chest Store'. In early 2017 a pilot inventory project was undertaken at this location by colleagues in Collections Information. Although it was initially believed that a portion of the collection had already been completed as part of this preliminary exercise, it was apparent that in order for the inventory to be accreditation compliant, we would need to start inventory again for all the locations previously processed.

Inventory was completed first in the plan chest store, before processing material commenced in the solander and drawer stores.

In March 2020, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the offices at Wellcome were closed and all phase one inventory came to a standstill. In December of 2020, 2 weeks of inventory commenced on-site before we went into lock-down in January 2021. Wellcome offices opened again, and in the April of 2021, inventory re-commenced, with some adjustments made to ensure covid-secure ways of working.

In March 2021, the then Collections Auditor resigned her post, which was filled again in April 2021 and another Collections Assistant was recruited in August 2021, bringing the team back to four full time members of staff. In the midst of 2020, contracts were extended for inventory colleagues until 29 April 2022, extending the project deadline.

In August 2021, the parameters of the visual material inventory were extended to include all visual formats across the collections, regardless of the system they had been catalogued in (i.e CALM and Sierra Management Systems) Originally visual material that had been catalogued as part of an archive collection was not in remit unless items and collections had also been attributed an iconographic number. As the inventory project is a unique opportunity to process material by location, it felt appropriate to process all visual formats in visual storage locations.