Heritage Malta - National Museum of Archaeology

Sustainability aspiration

Malta’s National Museum of Archaeology aims to strengthen its contribution to sustainable development by sustainably reorganising its reserve collection, taking into consideration environmental sustainability - looking for alternative packing materials - as well as social sustainability - through enhanced physical access to researchers and broader accessibility to the public through digitization. 

Challenges addressed

• Lack of human resources. Overcame this challenge by asking interns and students to help with the task of repacking from the old cartons / wooden boxes 
• Lack of space in the storage area. Lots of wooden boxes with just a few artefacts in them. The material was grouped according to the site and re-boxed accordingly.
• Loss of information on boxes related to the provenance of the material. We salvaged the labels, researched the information from the museum’s annual reports and re-labelled the boxes accordingly. 
• Artefacts were in a number of different rooms. Gathered boxes according to the site, repacked and stored them alphabetically for ease of access. 

OCM toolkit resources used 

RE-ORG Reorganization of Museum Storage

Museums as Tools for Sustainable Community Development: Four Archaeological Museums in Northern Peru

What’s next

• Continue digitizing to have a full inventory of the whole collection. 
• Research collection materials that currently have no provenance (maybe we can find the provenance). 
• Establish policies and procedures. 
• Create a collection movement register. 
• Create a routine ‘maintenance’ system to assess that labels are still in place / not fading etc., and if artefacts need conservation.  
• Continue researching to find alternative packing materials which are more environmentally friendly.  

SDG targets addressed

This OCM field project addressed the SDG targets below. Click on each target to learn more about their meaning, indicators and related tools in the OCM toolkit to help collections-based organizations strengthen their contribution to sustainable development.