Two of our Derby library staff members, Beth and Jo went on a visit to Derby Museum on Tuesday, to look around their storage facilities in order to get a good idea on how to look after the storage of our own hospital artefacts collection.
The day was really informative, and our guide for the morning was collections manager Spencer, who told us all about the correct way to record, label and store these fascinating objects.
We were able to see, amongst other things, a collection of artefacts from a chemists shop that had closed down, and included items not dissimilar to ones in our collection (but on a much larger scale).
Seeing the objects and artworks was fascinating, and the work that goes into cataloguing and preserving such varied and huge amounts of work is a massive job, which the staff at Derby Museum are doing brilliantly, and it's always great to look around their collection (the cafe is also worth a visit!).
Hopefully we will now be able to apply what we found out to our own objects, in order to preserve the history of the hospital for years to come.
(A mummy casket and some old fashioned cash registers were just a couple of the amazing objects in storage. The cabinet in the photograph above, came from the chemist shop, which we both coveted!)
If you are interested in our collection and what we have found so far, visit our Hospital Artefacts page, where there is also a link to our Instagram: