Locations and movements
Knowing where items in your collection are located is critical to collections management, but before we can record the location of items we need to document the locations themselves.
Documenting storage locations
The Locations and containers data source
The management of a collection can involve a vast amount of information about objects / items / books, people and organizations, events, administration and more. This information is stored as records in data sources. Each data source stores a specific type of information: details about collection items, people, events, loans, and so on. holds the records of fixed storage locations and containers, how they relate to each other, and any other information held about them. Broadly speaking, a fixed storage location is a shelf, room or building; and a container is a location that can be moved, a box or tray for instance.
Typically we add a record for each location from the highest level (the institution itself, or a building for instance) to the lowest (a shelf or container for instance). A hierarchy of location records is then built by linking the record for a container to the record for a shelf to a cabinet to a room to a floor to a building using the Is part of (part_of (2A)) and Contains fields (part (nt)). For example:
National Museum>Main Campus>Ground Floor>Special Exhibitions Room>Shelf 1
Tip: Use the Hierarchy browser when viewing records in Locations and containers to see the hierarchical relationship between locations.
The following fields are important when documenting a location:
|
Field |
Details |
|---|---|
|
Location or Container |
Whether this record is for a location or a container. The value selected here determines which fields are available in the record (different details are recorded for the two types of location). |
|
Name |
A name for the location (does not need to be unique). |
|
Barcode |
A unique ID, automatically assigned when the record is saved. Required for barcode scanners (like Axiell Move). |
Where Location or Container = location:
|
Field group |
Details |
|---|---|
|
Is part of |
In a hierarchy of locations, Name (part_of (2A)) links to the location immediately above this location (a room Is part of a floor, which Is part of a building for instance). |
|
Contains |
In a hierarchy of locations, Name (part (nt)) links to one or more locations immediately below this location. |
When we view the record for CCMC-C1, we see that it is part of CCMC and that it too contains a number of storage locations:
Where Location or Container = container:
Managing the location of collection items
Location details for items in your collection (in Objects, Archives, etc.) are found on two panels in Record details View:
- Location | Future movements
Here we record the normal and the current location of an item, as well as any future movements:
Two groups of fields are used when recording the location of items in your collection:
- Normal Location – the location where the item is usually found.
- Current Location – where the item is now.
The full hierarchy from the normal / current location up to the highest level is shown in a read-only context field typically placed below the Normal location and Current location fields. In this example, the current location of an object is Bay 1, and the context field shows the entire hierarchy from Bay 1 up to the highest level, National Museum:
As the name suggests, the Future movements group of fields is for recording the planned movement of an item. Details added here are not processed by Collections in any way (if you add a future movement date, the current location will not be updated automatically by Collections on that date).
- Location history
Here we find a history of changes to the location of the item. Any time that a change to an item's location is recorded, the Location history is updated.
