Cataloguers' Corner
Cataloguing is one of the central functions carried out behind the scenes in a museum. At the Welland Museum, a dedicated team of staff and volunteers carry out cataloguing. Artifacts and Documents are catalogued and preserved for the education and enjoyment of present and future generations of citizens and visitors to the area.
If you would like to know more about cataloguing or becoming a volunteer cataloguer at the Museum please call 905-732-2215 or email archives.wm@cogeco.net
Artifact n. (also artefact) a product of human art and workmanship.
Cataloguing v.t.r (also esp. US Cataloging) a process using standard formats that identifies and describes physical attributes, intellectual content, and provenance and categorizes in a classification system.
What is Cataloguers' Corner?
Cataloguers' Corner is being developed to complement our cataloguing functions, to provide information for recruiting volunteer cataloguers and to educate the public on this behind-the-scenes museum function..
How to Catalogue
Before an artifact is catalogued it must be acquired and this can involve legal forms being signed, preliminary research on the history of an artifact and interviews conducted with donors and individuals. All of these steps and more are called the "Acquisition Process."
When an artifact is catalogued, a detailed worksheet is filled out that captures all the important physical characteristics, along with known history or provenance of the artifact. Documenting an artifact will often lead to further questions and research. In cataloguing artifacts, the history of the Welland and Pelham area, our history, is preserved for future generations to learn from and enjoy.
Information Gathered During Cataloguing
Object Name & Category: To determine what to call an artifact, the Welland Museum uses Nomenclature for Museum Cataloging: A System for Classifying Man-Made Objects by Robert G. Chenhall. Once an artifact is named using Nomenclature for Museum Cataloging it can be classified in the Thesaurus hierarchy to determine the category and to group relevant artifacts together.
Accession No.: This is a control number that is applied to each artifact to maintain a connection to an artifact’s records and donors.
Period Made or Used: This is a date in time that an artifact was produced or used by its owner.
Relevance: This is a description of the use, places the object was used, historical significance, and relevance to the Welland and Pelham area. If the artifact is an image such as a photograph, a statement of what is occurring in the image is included.
Maker: The name of the artist, craftsman, designer or inventor of the artifact.
Manufacturer: The name of the manufacturer of the artifact.
Title: The title of the book, composition, film or painting. For photographs a title may be created by the cataloguer.
Description: A complete and concise description of the artifact; this may include the colour, shape, texture, or pattern. In describing an artifact we try to include enough detail so that it could be identified by someone who has not seen the object. For images this is a description of the physical appearance and not the content of the image.
Size: This is the overall size, in metric units, that an artifact would occupy in a 3 dimensional space.
Primary Substance: This is a listing of what material an artifact is composed of based on a visual inspection. In some cases, only the major material is listed for complex artifacts.
Markings: Recorded here are any markings, including inscriptions, serial numbers and identifying information.