Otago Museum authorities have decided to spend about $270,000 buying a sophisticated radio tracking system to monitor its collection items to boost efficiency and security.
The museum earlier unsuccessfully sought a $500,000 grant from the Lottery Grants Board to buy the system and meet related costs.
At a recent meeting, the museum trust board approved a proposal to buy the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system from an Australian firm, Smarttrack RFID, at a heavily discounted price of about $A200,000 ($NZ267,000).
The proposal includes 17 "portals", with readers, antennae, sensors and mounting brackets, as well as a hand-held reader and 100,000 RFID labels.
It is planned to install the technology about mid-year and progressively add electronic tags to collection items in future.
The Otago Museum would become the first large-scale museum in New Zealand to use the new technology and had been chosen by the Australian firm as a "reference site" for the technology, partly reflecting the museum's leadership success, museum organisers said.
In a written proposal to the board, museum exhibitions, development and planning director Clare Wilson said the technology would "very significantly decrease time required to access, identify and track movement of objects" , resulting in "substantial ongoing efficiencies" in staff time and boosting collection security and safety.
Museum artefacts will be equipped with electronic tags, enabling them to be tracked automatically when they are shifted from one part of the museum to another, using fixed "readers" installed throughout the institution.
Each artefact's location would also be automatically updated on on the museum's computerised collection management system. The museum has about 2 million collection items.
Museum artefacts were moved for many reasons, including exhibitions use, outward loans and storage reorganisation.
The museum's current tracking system involved staff reading the accession number off the object and manually updating its location in the museum data base.
RFID technology had been long-developed, being mostly used in anti-theft devices, including in clothing stores, as well as in warehouse and stock control, Ms Wilson said.
In museum use, a small tag was attached to an object. The tag, often 1.5cm by 10cm, stored some information and contained an antenna.
Tags were read from a distance by a hand-held or static reader.
The technology's "highly-valued" advantages included.-
Instantly updating its location as the object moved.
Allowing regular audits of collections to be done easily and quickly, saving labour and boosting security.
Improving access to artefacts, by locating them with a hand-held reader.
Readers on exit doors record any tagged collection item leaving the premises.
The museum already had plans to start a full collection audit later this year, which would take several years to complete.
Integrating the electronic tagging into this process would reduce labour requirements, museum organisers said.
