Managing Museum Collections at Collections Storage Facility

Since 2010 the Bodleian Library has stored over 10 million items across four chambers of the Bodleian Storage Facility (BSF) in Swindon.  From 2021, the BSF have used the market-leading CaiaSoft inventory management system to manage the storage and retrieval of library collection items.   

Most warehouse management systems expect items to leave the warehouse and never return, having been distributed out to a customer. Our requirements are different as items (whether Bodleian books or museum objects) temporarily leave their permanent storage location but will return after a time. 

Fortunately, CaiaSoft has the functionality needed to manage these processes and track objects stored in the new CSF chamber 5. For the project, this brings the added advantage that CSF staff are very familiar with the software, using it for their day-to-day work managing the Bodleian collections. 

The Bodleian Library Special Collections use the Atlas Aeon system for managing reader requests and staff workflows for accessing archives and manuscripts. 

Aeon can successfully manage the use of the four visitor rooms at the CSF, allowing object viewing enquiries to be recorded and managed through each stage through to the visit completion. 

The final piece of the puzzle is a comprehensive reporting capability, which will give access to a reporting database containing the full location histories of all museum objects, whether stored at the CSF or elsewhere. 

Stakeholders who will see some changes to their current processes are:

Other stakeholder groups will not be affected by this project, including:

CaiaSoft and Aeon are currently in use by the Bodleian Libraries, and this project will expand their functionality to include the storage and management of museum objects at the CSF in Swindon. Aeon is used to plan object viewing appointments and report on room utilisation, while CaiaSoft handles object retrievals and records all location moves within the CSF warehouse. 

Approval to view objects at the CSF is controlled by Collections Managers who receive enquiries from visitors. The CSF cross-collections staff will then engage with the visitor to schedule the visit, logging all the details in Aeon. The system can even send the visitor a confirmation email from Aeon with details of their upcoming visit and joining instructions.  

Visits are facilitated by the CSF based cross-collections staff. As the scheduled visit approaches, they will flag in Aeon that the objects need retrieving, and this will automatically send CaiaSoft a list of objects to be picked from storage. Warehouse staff will retrieve these objects, updating their location at each step as they move through the warehouse. When the visit is over, Aeon will trigger the refile of the objects back to their permanent storage location which is again tracked using CaiaSoft. 

You are welcome to view this diagram showing this workflow and the systems involved

Museum items stored at the CSF will be labelled with a CSF specific barcode, while also retaining their existing museum barcodes. The CSF barcode will be recorded in the museum CMS, using  new field in each museum CMS (MuseumPlus or EMu). The project will work with suppliers to create these in a logical place in each system. 

Storing the CSF barcode in the CMS creates a unique ID for each item or container that can be used to match data between systems, and this is important for the reporting functionality detailed here. 

The CSF barcode will either be hidden or read-only for the majority of CMS users and will not impact museum operations. 

Each CSF barcode will be prefixed with ‘M’ in order to differentiate museum items from the Bodleian's. The second character (A, H, N, or P) will indicate the museum of origin, aiding data routing and reporting. 

Oxford museums currently without a barcode strategy can either adopt the CSF barcode or create separate museum barcodes for internal use, as both options are supported. 

Further detail on the barcoding processes and consideration are detailed in the Barcoding Strategy.

The Museum Move project will purchase CSF barcodes that are compatible with the existing CSF barcode scanning hardware, affix these to objects before their transfer to Swindon, add the barcode IDs to the relevant museum CMS and scan the barcoded objects into the CaiaSoft system. This process is outlined in this diagram showing the agreed barcoding process

Historically, all object location data has been held in each museum CMS.  This project will introduce an inventory management system (CaiaSoft) which will hold granular location data for those objects stored at the Collections Storage Facility (CSF) in Swindon. 

For objects stored at the CSF, the CMS will simply display a location of 'Swindon CSF storage'. Museum staff will have read-only access to CaiaSoft should they require this detailed location history or real-time location of CSF objects. 

More information can be found in the following documents:

• Location Management and Infrastructure Strategy
• Reporting Strategy

The project team undertook extensive analysis to investigate data integration approaches that would populate each museum CMS with the CSF location data from CaiaSoft, within the key constraint that the integrity and stability of the CMS must be maintained.  

After reviewing several approaches and discussing options with the CMS suppliers, it was concluded that it would not be possible to integrate the CMS’s with CaiaSoft location data without risking the stability of the CMS systems, and that the risks around the integration failure were too high. 

It has been agreed that the most technically robust and reliable solution is to assign CaiaSoft as the authority system for the location data of objects at the CSF, and for the CMS location of these objects to show “Swindon CSF Storage” as their location at a high level. Enquiries for these objects can be passed to the cross-collection staff based at the CSF to handle. 

To prevent location reporting being run across two systems, the project will implement a reporting data warehouse to enable museum staff to run location reports as required for care of collections activities.  Museum staff will be able to run full location history and audit reports from this reporting database. 

Museums may have a need to periodically import CSF location data into their CMS, and the project is working with suppliers to create import templates and processes to enable this ad-hoc location history import. It would be a manual process that each museum can undertake as and when required, or at a set frequency, for example annually.

• Item: An container or freestanding (soft-wrapped) object
• CMS: Collections Management System, either EMu or Museum+
• CaiaSoft: The inventory management system in use in Swindon
• Aeon: The software to book and manage CSF research visits
• CSF: Swindon Collection Storage Facility