Registration Numbers

Registration Numbers are unique identifying numbers associated with physical objects in museum and art collections. Museums use them in order to track objects consistently over time and space.

Current Policy (1/2016)

• Upon receipt of a new item or group of items, the item/group receives an Accession Number. This is a unique number associated with the transaction of having received an object/collection.

  • New accessions that consist of a single object will have a registration number that matches the Accession Number.

  • New accessions that consist of multiple objects will have registration numbers that match the Accession Number followed by an additional sequential number

Formula: [Prefix for Collection].[Year of Acquisition].[Sequential Number for the Accession].[Sequential number for item within that Accession]

MUS.2005.12 = The sole item registered from the 12th accession of material to the Museum in the year 2005

ART.2013.20 = The sole item registered from the 20th accession of material to the Art Collection in the year 2013

MUS.2010.5.2 = The second item registered from the 5th accession of material to the Museum in the year 2010

ART.2014.2.53 = the 53rd item registered from the 2nd accession of material to the Art Collection in the year 2014

Whenever feasible, items are physically labelled with their registration numbers. See the Art Handling & Preservation documentation for information on how to attach the number.

Previous Policy (pre-2016)

Before 2016, items within the Art and Museum collections were generally processed on an item-by-item basis, meaning that each item received a registration number and separate record at the time of receipt. This was a reasonable policy but it has some downsides for scalability and for efficiency of records, and did not account well for cases in which a donor gave dozens of related objects at once. Because the Art, Museum, and Archives collections were also segregated administratively, they used overlapping sets of registration numbers. The post-2016 policy is an attempt to make the registration number system more efficient, scalable and suitable to a multi-repository administrative environment.

Older registration numbers may be found without prefixes, in this format:

1985_01 = The first item registered in 1985 (for the Art Collection)

2008_58 = The 58th item registered in 2008 (for the Art Collection)

In current digital records, the prefix "ART" or "MUS" will be applied to these older registration numbers. The numbers marked on physical objects will not be systematically updated.

Old Museum Registration and Cataloging numbers

Because the Museum has existed since the 1940s, several cataloging and registration number schemes have been imposed (and super-imposed) upon the collections. The apparent historical registration/cataloging number schemes appear to have been:

1-102 = First accession series, 102nd item

This scheme appears to have been used from the 1940s through 1979. There were five accession series; their significance is unknown but may have related to shelving location or collection type.

80-21 = Twenty-first item registered in 1980

This scheme, which conforms more closely to normal museum registration practices, uses the year of acquisition as the first component, followed by a sequential number. This form was used from 1980-1996, which was the time period when the Museum had its first formally-trained curators.

P-P-Pic-2-601 = A shelving call number; Probably meaning: Shelving location? + Medium + Registration number

This "catalog number" appears on old registration cards, and was probably the item's shelf location.