05/14/2026
Because museums hold THOUSANDS TO MILLIONS of cultural artefacts in public trust, it is imperative that an institution has a navigable storage system. With such a large quantity of items, however, it is easy for a museum’s storage system and staff to become overwhelmed. There are a multitude of reasons that this may happen, and often these overlap. The switching of hands, improper or loss of documentation, technological failures or mishaps, lack of physical storage space, disjointed or confusing organization, and so on.
In 2015, the Museum on Tower Hill worked with ICCROM-UNESCO’s international RE-ORG project in a massive undertaking to reorganise our collections room. Before this, the museum underwent a change in ownership, leaving staff with little-to-know idea where anything was. For reference, one of the measurements ICCROM-UNESCO was concerned with was how long it took an institution to find 3 specific artefacts. Prior to the reorganization, it took 3 months to find these three items. Now it takes us around three minutes.
To do this, staff had to empty the entire collections room of over 20,000 objects/archives, label, organise, and put them all back in a cohesive manner. With artefacts and archives coming in and out near constantly, organisation and reorganisation remains an ongoing project, even over a decade later.
The WPSDM is a nonprofit organisation, meaning that we rely on public financial support to sustain our operations. Want to see more projects like this in the future? Consider a donation of 25.00 CAD or more to receive a charitable tax receipt. For more info, visit https://www.museumontowerhill.com/may-is-museum-month-fundraiser
Museum Month is led by the Ontario Museum Association (OMA). To learn more about this initiative and the OMA, visit https://museumsontario.ca/en_ca/
