Totnes Museum has been very lucky to be awarded an AIM Collection Care grant which is helping us to care for and manage our collection more effectively. We had overstuffed boxes in our storeroom spilling out into our  workroom because we had items in inappropriate boxes and no archive quality boxes we could use and limited storage options. We even had a lesser horseshoe bat in the Nursery store cupboard for a while - though we were pleased to be able offer it a temporary residence. It's likely that the bat has moved to a winter hibernation roost.

Thanks to the grant we have been able to start a systematic audit of the collection in storage which enables us to know what we have and where it is. We have also been able to clean artefacts thanks to the collection specific vacuum cleaner, we have data loggers to make sure that our objects are cared for in the right conditions, we now have appropriate boxes and plenty of acid free tissue paper so we can repack objects and be sure they are safe. As a bonus we have rediscovered some really lovely items which have been in storage and also found some items we thought were missing and which have now been reunited with the rest of the group on display.