On my bookshelf

If you work with museum collections it is almost certain that at some point you will encounter some haphazardly piled boxes or objects in a corner and be told, “Sort that out, will you”. 

It’s enough to make anyone feel queasy. However, help is at hand thanks to this fantastic book by Angela Kipp. In 11 carefully crafted chapters, packed with experience and useful advice, Kipp holds your hand through every step of your own collections nightmare. 

She offers practical solutions and approaches for taking ownership of the problem (“It’s your mess now”) and shows you how to break a collections project into small manageable chunks. 

She offers advice on advocating for collections care in your organisation and the wider community, essential in light of funding cuts, and offers solutions to documentation and storage issues that every museum faces. There’s no jargon or statistics, which keeps the book accessible to those new to the sector while providing depth of knowledge and practical experience that can teach even the most hardened collections manager a few tricks.

During my first 18 months in a collections role, Kipp’s book became the friendly adviser in my pocket that I could turn to in times of need. It always had an answer or an approach I could adapt to the situation in which I found myself. Three years on, and it’s still an invaluable source of inspiration, comfort and help.

Handling collections backlogs and issues is often a source of shame, fear or worry for museums that are desperate to increase collections access and meet national standards. Kipp’s book is a welcome reminder that we have all been through the same issues in museums around the world, that there is always a practical solution and, above all, that you are not alone.