Every museum runs two inventories, and only one of them is looked after. The collection - the artefacts themselves - has a registrar, accession numbers, condition reports, and decades of professional discipline behind it. The other inventory is everything that makes the collection visible: projectors looping exhibit film, media players behind plinths, gallery lighting, audio guides, the workshop’s tools, the dataloggers in the cases, and the stacking chairs that earn the venue-hire income. That second inventory usually lives in nobody’s head in particular - and it is the one that fails at 9.50am on a Saturday with a school group at the door.
What you will learn
- Two inventories, one building
- The operational asset list
- Make the building the structure
- Keeping exhibits running
- Venue hire, education kits, and outreach
- Getting started
- FAQ
Two inventories, one building
The boundary matters. Collections management is its own profession with its own systems, and an equipment register should not touch the artefacts. But the habits that protect the collection rarely extend to the gear around it:
- Exhibit hardware is installed and forgotten. A media player sealed behind a plinth at install has no record, no service history, and no spare identified - until it dies mid-run.
- Equipment migrates between galleries. Lighting, plinths, screens, and cases move with each rehang, and after three exhibitions nobody knows which gallery the good projector ended up in.
- Departments share without records. Education borrows the events team’s PA; facilities borrows the workshop’s drill; the lent item returns to the wrong store, or never.
- Volunteers and casual staff rotate constantly, so knowledge of where things live walks out the door on a schedule.
- Grant-funded equipment has reporting strings. Hardware bought on a project grant may need to be accounted for years later, long after the project team has dispersed.
The operational asset list
A practical museum register covers:
- Exhibit AV - projectors, screens, media players, amplifiers, speakers, interactive kiosks. The uptime-critical core.
- Visitor technology - audio guides and the iPads and tablets used for gallery interpretation and accessibility, usually pool-issued daily.
- Education programme kit - handling collections (where policy treats them as equipment rather than accessioned objects), craft and science kits, and the Chromebooks used in learning sessions.
- Lighting - gallery spots and track heads, technical lighting for events.
- Workshop and technical tools - mount-making, install, and maintenance tools, often the most borrowed and least returned category in the building.
- Environmental monitoring - dataloggers and sensors, which carry calibration dates.
- Events and venue hire - staging, furniture, linens, portable AV.
- Outreach and touring kit - the crates, display systems, and trade show equipment that travel to fairs, schools, and partner venues, which spends weeks at a time off-site.
- Staff IT - laptops, radios, and the front-of-house till hardware.
Make the building the structure
Museums have a natural advantage most organisations lack: the building itself is a stable structure. Use it. An asset hierarchy of site, floor, gallery, and store gives every item a home location, and the register then answers the two questions that matter - what is in Gallery 4, and where is the spare projector - in one search. Give every item its own asset number on a discreet label, and treat anything that moves - the movable assets like tools, tablets, and event kit - as checked out from its home store rather than ambiently absent.
| Asset class | Usual custodian | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Exhibit AV, lighting | The gallery it serves | No identified spare; sealed-in units with no record |
| Tablets, audio guides | Front-of-house daily pool | Charging-room drift; dead units back in rotation |
| Workshop tools | Workshop store, checked out per job | Cross-department borrowing with no return |
| Event and hire kit | Events store, checked out per event | Morning-after scatter across the building |
| Touring and outreach kit | Checked out to the venue or fair | Weeks off-site with no record of condition |
Tip: place QR labels where staff can reach them but visitors cannot see them - the back of plinths, inside access hatches, under mounts. A label that interrupts an exhibition design will be peeled off within a week.
Keeping exhibits running
The operational difference between a good and a bad morning is how a fault travels. In most museums it travels by word of mouth - an invigilator tells a duty manager, who emails facilities, who asks which projector exactly. With a labelled register, the invigilator scans the unit and logs the fault with a photo; the technician sees which unit, which gallery, and the unit’s full repair history before walking over. That history is the quiet payoff: the projector on its third lamp failure in a year gets swapped for the spare and retired, instead of being fixed again on faith. Calibration dates on dataloggers and service dates on lifts and ladders live on the records too, where the duty schedule can actually see them.
Venue hire, education kits, and outreach
Three workflows move museum equipment fastest, and all three are checkout-shaped. Evening venue hires relocate furniture and AV across the building under time pressure - check the kit out to the event, and the morning-after open list shows what has not come back to store. Education sessions draw kits and devices daily - a pool checkout per session keeps the count honest. Outreach and touring send display kit off-site for weeks - check it out to the venue, with photos at departure so condition disputes at return are short. External hirers and partner venues can be recorded as the responsible party, so the register shows not just that twelve chairs are missing, but which hire they left with.
Getting started
- Start with the uptime-critical gallery kit - AV first, since it is what fails publicly. Record serials, photos, and the spare for each unit.
- Label discreetly as you go, including units inside plinths and racks.
- Build the building - site, floors, galleries, stores - and give every item a home.
- Move the borrow-heavy stores onto checkouts - workshop tools and event kit next.
- Log faults against the asset from day one, so history starts accruing immediately.
This is the shape of a proper asset tracking system, and it is what AMPthilly provides without the enterprise overhead: printable QR labels scanned by any phone camera in the browser, so volunteers and casual front-of-house staff need no app or training; checkouts to people, departments, locations, or external clients; an issue queue with photos for faults; and a permanent per-asset history that satisfies a grant report years later. The free plan covers 3 users and 25 assets - enough to pilot one gallery’s AV - with no card required, and paid tiers are on the pricing page.
FAQ
What is the difference between collections management and museum asset tracking? Collections systems handle the artefacts under registrar control; asset tracking handles the operational equipment around them - the gear that has no registrar.
What equipment should a museum track? Exhibit AV, visitor tablets and audio guides, education kit, lighting, workshop tools, dataloggers, event and hire kit, touring crates, and staff IT.
How do museums keep exhibit AV running? Per-unit records and fault history - scan the dead unit, log the fault with a photo, and let the repair history decide fix-or-swap.
How does QR labelling work in galleries? Discreet labels out of visitor sight; any phone camera scans to identify the item or report a fault, no app install.
Can a museum track venue-hire and event equipment? Yes - check kit out to the event or hirer, and the morning-after open list is the recovery checklist.
The takeaway
The collection gets the discipline; the equipment that presents it deserves at least a register. Give every operational item a number, a home location, and a discreet label; run tools, tablets, and event kit on checkouts; and log every fault against the unit so history - not memory - decides what gets fixed and what gets retired. The artefacts have a registrar. The projectors just need a record.