Museum documentation of the Croatian School Museum

Professional management of the Croatian School Museum is already evident in its oldest records, kept since the establishment of the Museum in 1901. The catalogues of Museum collections and sub-collections, of the Pedagogical Archives and Pedagogical Library, certified and signed by the first curator Josip Medved, reveal a well-ordered inventory of museum items, archival material and books. The first printed catalogue of the permanent exhibition, Croatian School Museum: its origin and organisation, was published in 1902. During the first decades, refereed journals and daily press would publish a section titled Gifts to the Croatian School Museum, which is an important source of information for establishing the acquisition and origin of items.

At a later stage, in particular after the 1950s, the material was processed and described in detail by means of subject cards.

Starting in the 1960s, with the development of museology in Croatia and the related legislature, inventory books were introduced, which have been kept continually to this day. At that time, books for museum material coming into and going out of the Museum were also established. Inventory books were kept for each museum collection, archive and library. A unified inventory book of the Museum was established in 2007.

Since 2000, primary Museum documentation is managed via interconnected computer databases M++ and K++.

Documentation on the Museum’s exhibition activities as per subject cards and current year has been continually kept since 1954 and today it contains almost 500 folders.

Documentation on pedagogical activity, hemeroteque and media releases was kept concurrently.

According to the Regulation on the contents and manner of managing museum documentation on museum materials, secondary documentation is today managed by the S++ database, containing the following holdings: Photography library, Video library, Audio library, Hemeroteque, Exhibitions, Publishing, Conservation-restoration procedures and Media library. The database currently holds about 3,000 entries that record the functioning of the Museum. Almost all of the holdings have an associated photo, video or audio material.

The primary and secondary Museum documentation are interlinked mostly through contents, which makes any search for information quite simple and quick.

Filip Sunđi, Documentation Specialist