In June, National Museums Scotland (NMS) moved more than 10 million objects from its Scottish history, archaeology and natural sciences collections into a new £12m building at the National Museums Collections Centre, located in Granton on Edinburgh’s waterfront.
The new building has enabled NMS to move items out of two off-site storage facilities, which were not considered to offer adequate care or physical access.
The Granton site has been used by NMS since the 1970s, and was acquired in 1992. A number of changes have been made to the site since then, including the introduction in the late 1990s of a large building to house science and technology collections, as well as a purpose-built textiles, mixed media and palaeobiology in 2010.
However, the new building has been one of the biggest projects at the site to date. The three-storey building, which was funded by the Scottish government and designed by Gareth Hoskins Architects, stands at nearly 15 metres in height and has a floor area of about 6,000 square metres.
The brief for the new centre included providing high levels of collections care alongside research access. New facilities include dedicated work benches with data and power points installed in each storage area, and very high level of thermal insulation and air tightness to minimise energy usage.
As part of the redevelopment, NMS trialled laser-cutting Plastazote (an inert foam used to hold fragile objects), which freed up staff time as they didn’t have to hand-cut shapes to store objects in. This proved a success, and may be rolled out further.
One of the benefits of the move was the opportunity it afforded NMS to reorganise the collections, says Chanté St Clair Inglis, the collections care manager at NMS.
“It was an immense project and we had to move very quickly,” she adds. “Lots of different curators and collections staff were involved, so we had to be ruthlessly pragmatic. We had to work out what our key priorities were for each collection, what ‘good’ would look like and how we could get there.”
Collections are ordered by subject, material type and, for many of the natural sciences collections, by taxonomic order so that they are better organised and more accessible.
The whole centre adheres to the recommended environmental guideline standards, with relative humidity (RH) of 40%-60% and stable temperature in the range 17°C -21°C.
Dedicated storage areas have been created for collections that require additional environmental controls.
For example, archaeological metal work is vulnerable to rust and requires less than 30% RH, while wet collections (specimens stored in fluid) need to be kept in a lower temperature setting to reduce evaporation and the risk of explosions.
Natural science collections are particularly vulnerable to damage from moths and vermin, so in addition to having integrated pest management and quarantine procedures, the new building has been designed to keep pests out.
There is a dedicated “dirty zone” at the front of the building, featuring a loading bay, a cloakroom and a tea room. This is separated from the collection storage areas through a series of large doors.
The design of the building includes clear access routes, which allow for building maintenance, cleaning and general access, as well enable staff to effectively monitor pest activity and report any concerns to the collections care team.
The storage systems that house collections have also been designed to lower the risk of pests. Closed metal cabinets with tight dust seals are employed throughout the building to prevent the build-up of dust, which encourages insects.
The centre has a mix of storage systems, but mainly consists of roller racks with shelves or drawers. This gives NMS a degree of flexibility in the future to move collections or change the purpose of rooms.
But in some cases, bespoke storage systems have been created. For example, previously some of the heavier archaeological material was kept on the floor, which meant a lot of it was inaccessible. Now, these objects are housed on heavy-duty roller racking in a storage space that is large enough to fit a fork-lift truck.
Elsewhere, the storage solutions have enabled the museum to reduce the collections’ overall footprint. “Our social history collections were previously stored in deep white wooden cupboards in eight large rooms,” says St Clair Inglis.
“We would stack ceramic plates, for example, but there was a lot of wasted space. With our new storage systems these same collections are now stored in just two rows of three-metre high roller racking.”
The collections centre has been a major project, but it is part of a longer-term masterplan to centralise NMS’s collections at the National Museums Collections Centre. The next phase of this is a capital project for next year to extend the reception building and increase the capacity for labs and other facilities.
There are also plans to look into widening public access to the collections centre, following the Scottish Doors Open Day earlier this year, in which members of the public can visit normally closed-access sites.
Chanté St Clair Inglis will present a paper on the new storage facility at the forthcoming MP seminar, Off The Shelf: Making Storage Work For You, at the British Museum on 17 March
The new building has enabled NMS to move items out of two off-site storage facilities, which were not considered to offer adequate care or physical access.
The Granton site has been used by NMS since the 1970s, and was acquired in 1992. A number of changes have been made to the site since then, including the introduction in the late 1990s of a large building to house science and technology collections, as well as a purpose-built textiles, mixed media and palaeobiology in 2010.
However, the new building has been one of the biggest projects at the site to date. The three-storey building, which was funded by the Scottish government and designed by Gareth Hoskins Architects, stands at nearly 15 metres in height and has a floor area of about 6,000 square metres.
The brief for the new centre included providing high levels of collections care alongside research access. New facilities include dedicated work benches with data and power points installed in each storage area, and very high level of thermal insulation and air tightness to minimise energy usage.
As part of the redevelopment, NMS trialled laser-cutting Plastazote (an inert foam used to hold fragile objects), which freed up staff time as they didn’t have to hand-cut shapes to store objects in. This proved a success, and may be rolled out further.
One of the benefits of the move was the opportunity it afforded NMS to reorganise the collections, says Chanté St Clair Inglis, the collections care manager at NMS.
“It was an immense project and we had to move very quickly,” she adds. “Lots of different curators and collections staff were involved, so we had to be ruthlessly pragmatic. We had to work out what our key priorities were for each collection, what ‘good’ would look like and how we could get there.”
Collections are ordered by subject, material type and, for many of the natural sciences collections, by taxonomic order so that they are better organised and more accessible.
The whole centre adheres to the recommended environmental guideline standards, with relative humidity (RH) of 40%-60% and stable temperature in the range 17°C -21°C.
Dedicated storage areas have been created for collections that require additional environmental controls.
For example, archaeological metal work is vulnerable to rust and requires less than 30% RH, while wet collections (specimens stored in fluid) need to be kept in a lower temperature setting to reduce evaporation and the risk of explosions.
Natural science collections are particularly vulnerable to damage from moths and vermin, so in addition to having integrated pest management and quarantine procedures, the new building has been designed to keep pests out.
There is a dedicated “dirty zone” at the front of the building, featuring a loading bay, a cloakroom and a tea room. This is separated from the collection storage areas through a series of large doors.
The design of the building includes clear access routes, which allow for building maintenance, cleaning and general access, as well enable staff to effectively monitor pest activity and report any concerns to the collections care team.
The storage systems that house collections have also been designed to lower the risk of pests. Closed metal cabinets with tight dust seals are employed throughout the building to prevent the build-up of dust, which encourages insects.
The centre has a mix of storage systems, but mainly consists of roller racks with shelves or drawers. This gives NMS a degree of flexibility in the future to move collections or change the purpose of rooms.
But in some cases, bespoke storage systems have been created. For example, previously some of the heavier archaeological material was kept on the floor, which meant a lot of it was inaccessible. Now, these objects are housed on heavy-duty roller racking in a storage space that is large enough to fit a fork-lift truck.
Elsewhere, the storage solutions have enabled the museum to reduce the collections’ overall footprint. “Our social history collections were previously stored in deep white wooden cupboards in eight large rooms,” says St Clair Inglis.
“We would stack ceramic plates, for example, but there was a lot of wasted space. With our new storage systems these same collections are now stored in just two rows of three-metre high roller racking.”
The collections centre has been a major project, but it is part of a longer-term masterplan to centralise NMS’s collections at the National Museums Collections Centre. The next phase of this is a capital project for next year to extend the reception building and increase the capacity for labs and other facilities.
There are also plans to look into widening public access to the collections centre, following the Scottish Doors Open Day earlier this year, in which members of the public can visit normally closed-access sites.
Chanté St Clair Inglis will present a paper on the new storage facility at the forthcoming MP seminar, Off The Shelf: Making Storage Work For You, at the British Museum on 17 March
