What’s in our artefact collection, and why? The Grey Roots Collecting Plan
The mission of Grey Roots is to engage and educate our communities in the human and natural history of Grey County by preserving and sharing collections, stories and memories that define our collective identity and guide our future. How do we decide what items become part of our collection? How do we ensure that our collections help us tell those stories?
Over the past sixty years, the collection of the Grey County-Owen Sound Centennial Museum, now Grey Roots, has become a wide-ranging local history collection of more than 13,500 artefacts. This Collecting Plan guides our artefact collection through:
- An analysis of the present collection ;
- A recommendation of classes of objects that should be sought and collected;
- Mandating museum staff to actively encourage donations and, where necessary, to purchase artefacts that fit established criteria;
- Suggesting practical limits on what may be collected and what should be avoided;
- Enabling planning for rational and controlled refinement of the artefact collection through selective deaccessioning measures.
Our Collections Manager, Sim Salata, will be presenting on this process at the upcoming Ontario Museums Association Conference in October!