Circa Museum Services provides services in cataloguing, inventory and audit for management of collections and individual heritage assets. The first and most important step in collection management is knowing what is in your collection. Having a detailed and searchable catalogue allows for proper decision-making about care, storage and use of a collection. It can inform further collection development and practical issues such as adequate insurance. An accurate catalogue is also an important prerequisite for planning storage, publishing online or arranging financial valuations.
Circa has performed audits and cataloguing for state institutions, corporates, independent museums and for local government including the City of Greater Bendigo, Macedon Ranges Shire Council and Golden Plains Shire Council. Circa can carry out full cataloguing with images to a museum standard using a range of museum CMS software, or we can create a simple Excel listing ready for import into an existing asset tracking system. Some common fields of data which Circa can capture for your collection items include dimensions, location (GPS or address), description, provenance, classification, condition rating and description, maker/creator name, creation date, significance and high quality images via photography or scanning. Circa can also provide advice and assistance around suitable database software options and/or publishing your collection data online.