Collection Equipment

Collection Facility Article and photography by Chian-Jin Yeh

The storage facility for the museum collections has an area of 1789m2, and occupies three percent of the museum area. There are eight areas in the storage facility, namely three archaeological collections (research, instruments, and temporary storage), the natural history collection, the ethnology collection, the textile collection, the archives, and the oversized collection. They are mainly used to store archaeological, anthropological, geological and paleontological collections and historic artifacts of the NMP. Adjacent to the storage facility are the working zones such as the reception room, quarantine room/freezing room, the photographic studio, archaeology workshop and the exhibition store.

The air-conditioning system of the storage facility is an ice-storing central conditioning system at a constant temperature and humidity. The system operates 24 hours every day, and is independent from that of the exhibition rooms and office zones. The indoor temperature of the storage facility is maintained at 20¢J¡Ó1¢J, and the relative humidity is maintained at 50%RH¡Ó5%RH. The storage facility uses fluorescent lights with low ultraviolet rays and standard color and temperature. An FM200 gaseous fire control system is used. All the abovementioned features help to reduce potential damage to the collections as a result of environmental effects and various potential disasters.

With the aim of maximizing the use of space and to be prepared for the increasing number of collections of the museum, a high-density movable closet system is used. The tracks are installed on the storage floor, and movable closets are affixed to them. Trays, drawers, cabinets with divisions or open shelves, partitions, hanging racks of various sizes are installed to accommodate all types of collections.

The collection storage facility adopts both close and open storage systems:

1. Close storage system

For collections of small- and medium-size specimens, valuable collections, or fragile and sensitive collections, they are stored inside the metal cabinets to prevent from dusts, humidity, insect bites, lights, fires, floods, acidification, and stealing.

2. Open storage system

Oversized or heavy collections are stored on open shelves, hanging racks, and partitions according to the shapes and sizes for space-efficiency. Moreover, the shelves are covered with non-acid cotton curtains for protection from dusts and lights.

Plastic pallet and power lifter are used in the oversized collection storage room to move the collections. In addition, every storage room is equipped with conveyance equipments such as forklift, trolleys, and foldable trolleys. Digital storage management system and workstations are available for staff to search the collections and databases.