Abstract

Smithsonian Collections Space in the GIS
Track: Facilities
Authors: Scott Krajenta

The Smithsonian has over 137 million objects in its collection, about 98% of which are in storage at any given time. Beginning in the fall of 2010, collections spaces became the focus of an institution-wide survey, identifying and evaluating all on the basis of condition and suitability for the intended purpose. Utilizing an ESRI geodatabase, and with the contributions of collections management and curatorial staff throughout the Smithsonian, the survey of over 1800 individual spaces was completed in three months. Reports were developed to tally scoring across a diverse set of requirements and inform the final approval of future spending on specific collections space by Smithsonian management within a year of the conception of the project. GIS proved the ideal platform for visualizing data, performing live edits in the field, and for evaluating conditions across zones of multiple spaces, as opposed to each space individually.