What do you do at the Museum? – David Powell

We have a lot of really fantastic volunteers, who get up to all kinds of interesting things behind the scenes here at the Museum. We caught up with Collections volunteer David Powell, to discover what he gets up to

What do you do at the Museum?

I work in the Collections Department, I do acquisitioning, paper work.

That sounds dull!

Rarely dull often challenging and very interesting.

Tell us more…

When an artefact is accepted by the Collections Manager it comes to my desk with its accompanying paperwork.

First job is to classify it and determine its simple name, i.e a name that appears on the Museum approved list.

All of this may be simple or very complicated depending on the object and its possible uses. Then comes the job of describing and drawing it! The most important part of describing the object is to find a feature that marks it out from a dozen similar items- an unusual shape, or colour, marks, a scratch, a chip or dent; anything that will assist people to find the object among similar in the future. (The object will have a unique number but that only helps once you have found the object.)

A unique number is allocated to the object and recorded in the acquisition register. Details are then recorded by simple name, donor, Town or City of origin and any special uses; marked with its number or give a name/number tag and sent off to the store.

Next please!