Managing Museum Storage in Rogaland (Norway)

Abstract

The use of shared storage warehouses in Norwegian museums has emerged in recent years as an effective way of saving resources and ensuring that cultural assets are adequately protected.

This article and case study describes the work carried out in one of the biggest shared storage warehouses in Norway, located in a former munitions store near Stavanger, in the Rogaland region. It describes the efforts of the Samlingsteam Rogaland (Rogaland Collections Team), a travelling support unit assisting museums with cataloguing, digitisation, storage and conservation, created expressly to support museums and establish best practices in collection and storage management.

Both offer innovative examples of the efficient use of resources dedicated to collection management and storage, which have been used as models to set up similar working systems in other areas of Norway.

The existing literature is sparse both in reference to the storage warehouse and its transformation process as described in this case study, and to the Samlingsteam. The data used to assemble this case study was drawn from the professionals directly involved in the project, and their first-hand experiences as part of the working team. As such, this article represents a unique way of discovering the project and its completed work.

Keywords:

• storage
• shared warehouse
• case study
• collection management
• storage management
• Norway

Acknowledgements

This article was made possible thanks to information obtained from collection managers in Rogaland museums, alongside Eirik Aarebrot, Ove Magnus Bore, Jeanne Dalbu, Bente Kvame Hadland and Kate Newland. I also thank the patient revisors of the present text.

Notes

1 Dalbu (2012) points to information that shines some light on this excessive proliferation: museum numbers rose from 179 in 1975 to 315 in 1994 (NOU 1996), which already seems significant, but even more were added to the register carried out in 2000, with 800 museums and collections across 700 different administrations.

2 At that time Win RegiMus was used, the predecessor of the current database Primus.

3 The objects recorded in the Primus database can be consulted online at www.digitaltmuseum.no, available since 2009.

4 Available at: https://fellestjenestene.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/praktisk-hc3a5ndbok-2014-2019.pdf [Accessed 24 May 2021].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Belén Navazo Hourcade

Belén Navazo Hourcade holds an undergraduate degree in History of Art (2004), as well as Masters degrees in Museography and Exhibitions (2006) and in History of Museums and Historic and Artistic Heritage (2011) from the Complutense University of Madrid. In 2006, she began her professional career in museums, working in the field of exhibition coordination and assembly. From 2009 to 2010 she headed up the artwork-handling team at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. In 2014, she began working with the Collections Team at the Department of Cultural Heritage of Rogaland (Samlingsteam Rogaland). She remained there until 2019, when she was hired by Museum Stavanger (MUST).