Documentation of the Documentation of the Liddle Car.

Mark Carnall Curator of the Grant Museum of Zoology & An Van Camp Cataloguer of Dutch and Flemish Prints at the British Museum.

The toy car forming the focus of the Object Retrieval Project is an object from one of UCL Pathology Collections. Today there are a wealth of standards regarding the documentation of museum objects however, in most museums across the UK the reality doesn’t quite fit with the ideal.

We can think of documentation in the context of museums in three phases:

1) The Object’s ‘Active’ Life
2) The Object’s Museum Life
3) The Object’s afterlife or afterlives.

The ‘Active’ Life of the Car
Under ideal circumstances we would have the following information and documentation that came with the Toy Car from the second it was manufactured through to the day it entered the museum collection. Documentation from the active life of the object is potentially INFINITE and this one single object could put a strain on typical museum information management systems if only we had enough researchers to do it all. Here is some of the documentation we would expect to find under ideal conditions:

•The original car packaging.
•Details about the factory in which this car was made from the continent level to a GPS reference.
•The batch number so we might even be able to trace the hour or minute the car was made.
•The receipt from the store from which the car was bought.
•Dated and authored photographs of the boy named in the LEAD POISONING case notes perhaps photos from Christmas day, or birthday when he may have received it.
•A short biography of the boy in question including all kinds of personal information we can’t publish which in turn may include occupation, language, address, date of birth, preferred forenames etc.

Unfortunately, the object went into the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) teaching collection before it came to a museum proper and as such persons responsible for administrating the teaching collection were probably under no obligation to collect this information when the car was ‘confiscated’. This problem still exists in modern Universities in that as long as the acquisition of an object is ethical and legal there is little framework or impetus for collecting all this information at the point of contact, unless of course it is to a University Museum but even then that information may be lost or forgotten by the original owners. For recent discussions here at UCL addressing this problem see here http://www.ucl.ac.uk/cultural-property/policy.shtml. The fact that this object was confiscated rather than donated may mean that the family of the boy have grounds to ask for it back. This would be a legal nightmare.

This is enough for the object’s active life. As museum professionals there is little we can do about it and we don’t have control over it. We get what we get :(.

The ‘Museum Life’ of the Car
In theory the museum documentation is something we have control over. When the car came from the GOSH teaching collections to the pathology collection at UCL, in fact even before, there should have been a paper trail which we would expect to find under ideal conditions.

•Original correspondence between the GOSH and the Royal Free Hospital regarding the rescuing from a bin/donation of the collection and the subsequent decision by UCL to acquire the object with specific details about how the object will be stored and where it will be stored. If we were lucky there might be photographs of the object as part of the initial reconnaissance to acquire the GOSH collection.
•An object entry form. An object entry form documents when the object enters space that is under the museum’s control. It documents the transferral of legal title from one owner to another (and under normal circumstances it would include unequivocal evidence that the donating institution had legally and ethically acquired it). It would also document who the object came from. Ideally it would have an entry number linking it to the original entry record.
•An accession register. After trustees of the host institution have made the decision, following recommendations from a curator, to acquire the object for the museum collection the object should be acquired and accessioned. This requires that the object is given an accession number and details of the transaction are recorded in a register. Together with the initial correspondence, object entry form, meeting minutes agreeing the acquisition of the object at trustee level and accession register we should be able to prove that we own this object as well as an object history and short description of the condition of the car down to the slightest scratches and dents.
•The accession number should be marked on the specimen in a permanent yet reversible way.
•A catalogue entry. This may take many forms. If the object came to UCL in the 1980s we might expect an index card with the object entry number, accession number, condition, dimensions, history, previous numbers, inscriptions etc. Today we might expect a database entry with all this information and more in the relevant fields.
•Then we move into the museum documentation that documents the use of the object. This would include any notes about when this object was used in teaching, the class sizes, the course numbers, the tutor, the classroom, the notes that went with the object (we might have these with the case notes), details of any coursework that may have been done on the car.
•Publications of the car. Details of publications that have been done on the car. In theory any publications should have referenced this object by its accession number (S.4)? 315678? and with the pathology collections MDA prefix (the pathology collections doesn’t have one yet).
•Loan Forms. This should be the documentation detailing every time the object was loaned to another institution (an external loan) or loaned to another UCL department (internal loan). In fact there should even be internal loan forms from the pathology collections to the Object Retrieval project and in fact subsequent loan forms to all our fantastic colleagues who have borrowed the object for various research techniques. There should also be external loan forms with details of insurance for when the object went off site to Derbyshire for some photography and a whole bunch of other forms that detail how the object should be stored and handled (it is potentially toxic after all) and further forms detailing the condition of the object when it was safely deposited on the bus in the quad of UCL so when it is picked up (the exact date and method of removal should be documented) we can see if those dastardly visitor types have done it a damage.
•An object removal slip or form. In the objects place at UCL pathology there should be a little object movement slip detailing that the object is not where it normally should be but that it is on a Routemaster bus in the quad WC1E 6BT.
•Destructive Sampling Forms. There are a number of occasions when researchers may wish to destructively sample an object to find out information that can not otherwise be deduced. This includes when samples were taken from the object to analyse it under SEM and when the object was destructively sampled for pigment analysis and for lead testing. This is ideally signed off by trustees otherwise the decision to destructively sample an object rest with curators only. That is way too much power for one individual to handle, can you imagine the chaos? There are also a number of very famous cases when curators have taken it into their own hands to do with objects as the see fit. Bad curators.
•As well as a destructive sampling form, the samples that were taken now take on a life of their own! The destructive sampling forms should detail where these samples will end up (back at UCL? In the bin? With the researchers?) and if they end up back in the pathology collections they might need a new number 315678a? or maybe S.4a, b and c?
•A whole bunch of forms detailing who owns which rights and the appropriate credit lines that should travel with all the object photos wherever they may go. Whether fees were waived for photography and why they were waived? Photography of objects is a genuine stream of funding for resource poor museums but there are some grounds for waiving these fees (and I think the Object Retrieval project is a fine one). And if there are any photos, videos or audio recordings we would expect copies of those too.
•Ideally all of the above forms should be dated and with names signed and printed so in the future we can see exactly who did what with the object when. Curators around the world would be approximately 45% happier if this happened regularly.

This isn’t all the museum documentation we might expect but you can see that even without an army of researchers (à la Object Retrieval) we start to create a stack of documentation about this object. Now imagine you are a curator of a museum with 1000 objects. Oh how it starts to mount. Or a million objects! It doesn’t bear thinking about.