Inventory

If, during your visit to the permanent collections of the museum, you see a group of people in white coats, equipped with magnifying glasses and measuring tapes, busying themselves with the collections, don't be surprised: they are carrying out a thorough "inventory".

This innocuous term conceals a whole series of operations for the verification of museum collections, introduced by Law no. 2002-5 of 4 January 2002 relating to museums in France. According to this text, "inventory is the operation that consists of verifying, by item and on site, on the basis of an object or its inventory number: the presence of the object in the collections, its precise location, its condition, its marking with an inventory number and the compliance of that number with the inventory register". The date for the completion of the first mandatory 10-year inventory is set at 12 June 2014. A second 10-year inventory will then begin.

With more than 1.3 million objects, the teams of the Museum of Aquitaine still have lots of work to do. (MCH)