Museum archives

Niiicola said:

I'm hoping somebody could help me with a few questions about museum archives, specifically having to do with ancient artifacts.

Back in the '70s, one of my characters used to work as an assistant to the archivist at a national museum, and ideally I'd like for her to have snuck into the museum at night and browsed the artifacts (she had a penchant for Mesopotamian stuff), and hopefully stolen a couple of lesser-known items here and there and covered it up within their record system.

Basically, I'm wondering A) how realistic this would be, and B) how the artifacts would have been stored, how easy it would be for her to search through and dig things out on her own, etc.

Many thanks in advance!

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It would be tough for anyone without access to the books and at least some accounting knowledge to cover that up. Your assistant needs a bookkeeping background, if not to be a bookkeeper. It would be idiotic for a museum to let their accounting function have access to their assets. I do not see that happening. Maybe if the museum was too small to afford to do otherwise.

ETA: I do government and nonprofit auditing as a day job so ya can trust my words. Another possible way would be collusion between two people, one in accounting and one in assets, procurement, receiving, etc.

^ I am just wondering how the hell he covered his tracks. Can't see how one would without collusion, or stealing receivables before they ever made their way into the books. I mean, was the place not getting annual audits?

Those are some shit ass internal controls, at any rate.

No problem. The only way I can see this working out for the dude who stole from the archives is a serious run of luck and if he only took small stuff.

The way we check small assets is as follows (when dealing with large orgs). We select a certain percentage, usually around 5% to 10%, and check their existence against the records. And if a tiny handful go missing, that's okay, because shit just happens sometimes.

So if he was really lucky in that these things didn't show up much if at all in the audits, and if the number was just small enough to go under the auditors' radar, I can see it working out for him even if he did not alter the records.

ETA: I see this as far more likely than the National Archives having incompetent auditors or none at all, FTR.

Caveat: I'm speaking from experience with large natural history collections from the 1980s - 2000s onwards, so this might not be directly applicable to cultural collections.
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Your thief probably wouldn't need to cover up by altering the accession and registration records unless the material was likely to be used by researchers or exhibition staff. In the collections where I worked, records were handled within the department by curators, collections managers and technicians rather than by separate archive staff.

In the 70s, the records would have been on paper, most likely in big books. Accessions would be recorded as the material came in, just to get the pieces acknowledged as part of the collection. Material that came in as a lot -- that is, from the same location at the same time -- might well be given the same accession number, so several pieces would share that number. (The number of pieces in that lot would be recorded.)

Registration of the material might be done at the same time or later, depending on the amount of work involved. Material was allotted a unique registration number and the number (and details) recorded in numerical order in a separate register. Computerisation of collections didn't really start in a big way until the 80s.

Locating the material would depend on the way the collection was arranged. I don't know about cultural collections, but they could be arranged by culture, period and location of find in that order. Maybe there's some tension to be had in her rifling through the wrong cabinets while someone is working in a different area of the collection?

Your thief could have wandered down to the relevant section of the collection, opened the right cabinet (as long as it wasn't locked) and pocketed the pieces whenever she liked. She might have needed to shift around the drawer contents to make the gaps less obvious and if she was really cautious, she might contrive to spill coffee on the register.

Museum security is a lot better now.

Is she stealing for financial gain, or just to have a souvenir of a favourite era? If she takes something small that marks a change in style or material, or is simply different from the rest, someone might note it's disappearance.
But, if she takes one of hundreds of almost identical arrowheads, or one of thousands of worn, common coins, or chunks of broken pottery, what odds that anyone will ever notice?
The stuff not good enough for display, but kept because you can't throw out artifacts, someday they might provide information, or context, or samples for testing, is unlikely to be missed.

Helix, your account chaps my ass. And I haz an accounting sad.

Not hard at all, if your character has access to the off-site storage areas. Museums can't find stuff all the time (even now with computerized records) - usually it's just mis-stored somewhere it shouldn't be, sometimes it's been pulled for a special exhibit or collection (usually not something major, but "Gosh we have an extra alcove, didn't we have a bunch of old toys? We could do a display!"), sometimes it's been broken and needs some sort of repair or maintenance, and sometimes it's been sold or given away and the records didn't get updated. And yes, sometimes things get stolen, but the museum can't determine that until they've eliminated ALL the other possibilities OR there's a pretty clear pattern of specific items disappearing and they've got a good idea what a potential thief may be after.

(That really only applies to the less valuable stuff - things with intrinsic value of their own are usually archived more thoroughly and kept with better security.)

^ what she said.

Yorkist said:

Helix, your account chaps my ass. And I haz an accounting sad.

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It was interesting (and, obviously, necessary) to work with the financial side of the govt to estimate the monetary value of the collection. Once we all got over the 'there's no replacement value! How do you replace Darwin's specimens or a thylacine?' stuff, it was fascinating exercise.

Mind you, that wasn't a specimen audit. I would not want to be the person responsible for one of those in a large natural history museum!

ETA: Clarifying my comment about the specimen audit. A specimen audit would have been an easy thing to do, just extremely time consuming in a large collection (of millions of specimens). In a well-curated collection it requires no great effort to lay your paws on a particular specimen. Material that's out on loan to other institutions or on display is always noted as such.

ETA2: The Sequel: My initial comment upthread on accessions and registration books was about the situation in the period of the OP's story. Once computerised collection management came in, the procedure changed.

Why do you need the character to cover up the theft by altering the records?

The actual theft seems plausible enough, based on what others have said, so the only real issue is her altering the records. That would be much more difficult.

There's really no reason for her to "cover her tracks" by altering the records unless she's going to publicly try to sell the artifacts she's stolen. If not, she steals them, they eventually notice they are missing, and they would have absolutely no idea who took them or when.

Unless they have some specific reason to suspect her, why would they even consider her as a suspect? Especially if she stole stuff that wasn't used regularly so they wouldn't even know when it went missing. ("Well, it was here in 1958 when a researcher looked at it. No idea when after that it was taken...")

Yorkist said:

^ I am just wondering how the hell he covered his tracks.

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Open drawer. Open box with artifact. Put artifact in lunch box. Close box. Close drawer.

Unless someone is looking for that same artifact, nobody will miss it for years.

Jeff

Yeah, these guys covered it pretty well. Totally plausible in a number of ways. If someone has alone time with the artifact, not hard at all to just pocket it and go. It would be surprisingly easy, I think.

You guys are not auditors (assumption). This would not happen on my watch. Or at least, it would have been caught within a year or two.

IClaytonR said:

Yeah, these guys covered it pretty well. Totally plausible in a number of ways. If someone has alone time with the artifact, not hard at all to just pocket it and go. It would be surprisingly easy, I think.

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'Appallingly' easy is more appropriate, I think.

Yorkist said:

You guys are not auditors (assumption). This would not happen on my watch. Or at least, it would have been caught within a year or two.

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Within a year or two you would have caught on that something or things were missing? I'll bet the waters are pretty muddy by then. Especially with other stuff going missing, accidentally, coincidentally, during those couple of years. What chance of actually catching the perpetrator? Or even identifying them, if they've moved on?
If someone knew the odds were in their favour, they might just grab one final, really nice item, and go. Not even 'slip quietly away'. Announce her departure, let the co-workers throw a little going-away party, accept the gift graciously, and drive off waving bye-bye.
Older lady, has retirement party, leaves. Couple of years later, the losses are noticed - how many people even remember her name, let alone think of her as a suspect? Out of sight, out of mind is kind of how it goes with retirees.