What do all these numbers mean?!?

If you are anything like me when I first encountered the Beardsley Collection, you're probably feeling a little confused right now.  You've looked at that weird trinomal number on that itty bitty piece of paper you picked out of my son's hat and thought "oookay...now what?" That is a really good question. At this point in the game the slew of numbers thrown at you is pretty disorienting. But don't fret! It will all make (some) sense soon. 

In the hopes of easing your confusion, I've copy/pasted a bit of my prospectus (the formal statement of what I am writing my thesis on) that I think will help answer at least a couple of your questions... 

The Beardsley Collection forms a core collection of the Anthropology Museum, and as such its preservation is critical to the educational and research missions of the museum. Without good record-keeping and contextualization, it is difficult to fulfill the full educational and anthropological potential of a collection (Burcaw 1997). A detailed physical inventory will examine all objects within the collection in order to update locations, determine missing or stolen items, and identify objects in need of conservation. It will also organize the collection and determine the accuracy of registration records (Buck and Gilmore 1998, Morris 2007).

The inventory will appraise all the records associated with the collection. Familiarity with museum terminology is an essential first step when setting out to do any inventory. Burcaw’s (1997) definitions work well for a simple understanding of museum vocabulary. A collection represents a grouping of objects that have something in common, in this case all of the objects were donated by a single collector (the Beardsleys), but a collection of objects can also be defined by type (as in a collection of ceramic items).  An accession refers to the objects that make up a single transaction between the museum and a source; the objects of the Beardsley collection were donated at the same time and so they are all a part of the same accession. Accession number is the numerical identifier for the object or set of objects associated with a given donation (the Beardsley Collection accession number is 74-2). Registration is the act of assigning a permanent accession number to an accession, this usually occurs at or near the time of donation. The Beardsley Collection donation predates the implementation of accessioning protocol and so it was not assigned an accession number until 1974—eighteen years after entering the SSC collection. Cataloguing is the act of designating an object to one or more descriptive classificatory systems. The objects in the Beardsley Collection have been subjected to a variety of cataloging events and systems. For example, all the ceramic items have been assigned a catalog number that ties them typologically and comparatively to other ceramic items owned by the museum. An accession file stores all the information about the donation and care of the objects. This may include museum records of donation, registration, and cataloging, as well as any known information on the previous owners/collectors of the objects (including but not limited to ephemera, previous owner’s written records, and publications).  

The assortment of objects that have come to be known as the Beardsley Collection were donated in 1956 to the Sacramento State College Anthropology Department by a Mrs. Arthur White and were originally cataloged into the teaching collection.  Since that time, they have been cataloged in a multitude of ways. Each catalog event signifies a new methodology of classification and contextualization for the objects. An example of one object’s career through the various events will be more intelligible than an abstract discussion, and will also assist in an explanation of my intended inventory methodology. A small ceramic black bowl will work nicely as a representative example. Today this object has three numbers associated with it. A typed note of unknown origin has been placed inside of the bowl and reads “Italy—Bowl from a buried Roman Villa, Baeia, Bay of Naples.” As a part of the registration phase, the bowl was entered into the Sacramento State College Department of Anthropology’s 3x5 card catalog. No museum existed at this time so index cards created for archaeological finds were used (Castaneda 2010). A museum worker by the name of Hood (it is currently unknown if this is a student, staff, or faculty member of SSC) cataloged the collection. Each object was given a single identifying number; the bowl was cataloged as number 82 and labeled as such with a round paper tag.

In the early 1970s, a new system was established that cataloged objects by type (as previously discussed).  This system used a prefix describing the object (basket, beadwork, ceramic, lithic, etc.) followed by a sequential number. The bowl became CER-248.

In 1974, the museum adopted professional museum registration procedures, formally accessioning the Beardsley Collection using a binomial system (74-2) that allowed for the creation of trinomial catalog numbers based on the sequential identification of each object within the accession (Castaneda 2010). Under this system, the Roman bowl discussed above became 74-2-60. The first part of the trinomial denotes the date accessioned (although customarily this would be the year of acquisition), the second designates it as part of the Beardsley Collection, and the third is the object’s unique identifying number. At this time a formal inventory was produced by O’Bannon (possibly a student). This record enumerates 141 objects, photo albums, books and personal papers, and marks the last time the Beardsley Collection was inventoried.