Where Museum Collections Workflows Create Hidden Work

The clearest sign of disconnected museum technology is often not a technical error, but the presence of workarounds.

Museum staff are resourceful. When systems do not quite support their work, teams build processes around them: spreadsheets, shared drives, naming conventions, email chains, file-transfer services, and individuals’ institutional knowledge.

Those solutions keep the work moving, but they can also hide how much effort the underlying technology requires.

The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at UC Berkeley knew that problem well. Before its recent technology transformation, collection records lived in a legacy collections management system, digital assets were stored separately on university servers, and Flickr provided access to some public-facing imagery but was not connected to the collection database.

During a recent Terentia webinar, Magnes Database & Digital Assets Manager Tina Kremzner-Hsing described the situation simply: “A record with no image, an image with no record.”

The issue was not that the museum had no technology, but rather, they lacked a unified system. 

Disconnected Systems Turn People Into the Integration

To evaluate your own museum collections workflows, ask: Does one person ever have to hand something to another person because the systems do not connect?

The Magnes had this exact issue with their collections inventory.

Registrar & Collections Manager Andrea Calderon explained that she and the museum’s head preparator could create 100 to 200 photographs during a single inventory day. But rather than simply uploading those photos immediately after taking them, Andrea would give the files to Tina, who then had to upload and manage them through the legacy workflow. 

With Terentia, Andrea can upload the images herself, update their metadata, and associate them with the appropriate records.

By eliminating handoffs just like this one, the Magnes now has streamlined workflows that save countless hours across inventory, research, photography, loans, rights and reproductions, exhibitions, and public access. 

Digital Assets Can Create Hidden Work

The Magnes also discovered how much invisible effort had accumulated in its digital files. Before migration, Tina identified approximately 82,000 collections-related digital assets in the museum’s existing file environment, many of which were duplicates or unnecessary derivatives.

After months of review and cleanup, she reduced that number by about 75%, preparing approximately 20,000 assets for ingestion into the new environment.

For institutions considering digital asset management for museums, the problem is rarely just, “Where should we store all these files?”

Instead, ask:

• Why do we have multiple versions of the same asset?

• Which files actually need to be preserved?

• Can staff find the authoritative version?

• Is the asset connected to the collection record it represents?

• Does rights information travel with it?

• Can staff reuse it without asking someone else to locate or prepare it?

• Can it ultimately support online collections and public access?

A digital asset management system (DAM) can help address questions like these, but only if it fits the way museum collections work.

Growth Makes Hidden Work Harder to Ignore

For the Magnes, the turning point was scale. The acquisition of the Roman Vishniac Archive added more than 30,000 photographs, negatives, audiovisual materials, correspondence, and other objects to the institution. 

The acquisition effectively doubled the collection, while staff size stayed the same.

This changed the question from “Can we keep making our existing processes work?” to “Can these processes support where the collection is going?” The Magnes ultimately moved to Terentia for access to a connected environment supporting collections management, digital asset management, and online collections.

The Advantage of a Unified DAM and CMS Platform

If digital assets live in one system and collection records live in another, staff may need to maintain relationships manually, repeat metadata, or switch between interfaces to understand the complete story of an object.

A technical integration can improve that, but institutions should ask what “integrated” actually means in practice. Can staff see an object and its related assets together? Can images be associated with records without manually maintaining file paths? Can metadata and permissions move through workflows consistently? Can assets eventually support research, exhibitions, rights and reproductions, and public access?

To clearly answer “Yes” to all of these questions, consider using one unified platform. 

Terentia’s approach brings collections management, digital asset management, and collections engagement into one application, while also supporting integrations with other systems where institutions need them.

How to Find and Eliminate the Hidden Work at Your Museum

You don’t need a major acquisition to evaluate your own workflows. Instead, choose one common task and follow it from beginning to end. 

For example, take a new collection photograph and ask:

• Where does the file first go?

• Who names it?

• Who adds metadata?

• How does it connect to the collection record?

• Who controls access and rights?

• How does another department find it?

• What happens if a researcher needs it?

• How does it reach the public collection?

• How many systems and people does it pass through?

Then look for the transitions where hidden work lives. For example, maybe separate people are in charge of uploading files and naming them, or perhaps you lack a public online database, requiring all researchers to contact your team for access. 

Apply this same exercise to any system at your museum, including research requests, loans, condition reports, exhibitions, digitization, and rights and reproductions.

Your Technology Should Give Time Back, Not Take More of It

The Magnes did not modernize simply because its software was old. It modernized because a small team could no longer afford to spend so much time compensating for its technology.

That is a useful distinction. The most important measure of a museum system is not how many features it lists. It is whether the system helps people spend more time on collections, research, teaching, exhibitions, and public access, and less time maintaining the gaps between tools.

Are there any workflows at your institution that feel more complicated than it should? Bring it to a Terentia Show & Tell.

You show us how your team handles it today, and we’ll show you how the same work could happen with Collections Management, Digital Asset Management, and Collections Engagement working together.