Museum Documentation Advice

Who am I?

Unst Heritage Centre - the most northerly museum in the UK

As Scottish Museums Documentation Officer, employed by the National Museums of Scotland from 1989-2004, I was responsible for advising and assisting museums in Scotland with the use of information technology, particularly in order to improve documentation of their collections. As from October 2004, I shall be self-employed but can help with the selection of a new collections management system, or the improvement of an existing one. I can often help to get records converted from one system to another. I'll even do a bit of data entry or editing, if necessary, at very reasonable rates. There are answers to some Frequently Asked Questions here.

One of the tools I developed and have provided is the Museum Inventory System,

A record in the Museum Inventory System

a FREE copy of which is available by clicking on the link. If that does not work for you, please write, phone or e-mail me. MIS was developed from 1989 to 1995 and is a DOS-based application which will work on almost any standard PC, no matter how old. It is intentionally limited in its scope and features, providing for little more than very basic inventory requirements. The records you create are stored in standard dBase files, which makes it very simple to transfer them to more sophisticated systems in the future. A much more sophisticated Windows-based system which is also available free of charge is AdLib Museum Lite.

Another part of my original job description, was to look at ways of creating a national database of museum collections in Scotland. To that end I acquired a large collection of records from a wide variety of museums, some of whom used me as an off-site backup facility.

I was also responsible for the databases resulting from collections surveys undertaken in the 1980s and early 1990s. These included the Natural Sciences Collections Survey (results available via the FENSCORE website), the Industrial Heritage Survey, the University Collections Survey and the Foreign Ethnographic Collections Research Project. Please contact the National Museums of Scotland if you wish to enquire about any of these databases.

Please contact me if you think I can provide any service that you might need. I shall be happy to provide a quote.

Training in various aspects of museum documentation is usually carried out jointly by NMS and the Scottish Museums Council. We produced a CD-ROM An Introduction to Museum Documentation, which is available from the mda

SMC training course in Basic Museum Documentation, Summerlee, October 2002

I can be contacted by telephone on Livingston 416462, conventional mail to: 56 PR, EH54 6NR or e-mail.

I am a Trustee of the Bennie Museum, Bathgate and was a member of the Board of mda from 1994 until May 2003.