Collections, Collections Care and
Management Approach

It is the policy of the Kitikmeot Heritage Society to take whatever preventive, conservation measures are necessary to retard or minimize deterioration of museum objects and materials. The necessary preventive measures are based on a thorough understanding of how objects and specimens react to their environment and deteriorate physically or chemically.

Display of artifacts on loan from the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
(Kim Crockatt/KHS)

• Remedial conservation involves a treatment to an object or specimens to bring it to a more acceptable condition or state in order to stabilize it or enhance some aspects of its cultural or scientific value.

• When remedial conservation is necessary, the KHS relies on the expertise and support of the Canadian Conservation Institute and the institutes from which the collections were borrowed.

We will pursue 'best practice' in our preservation and conservation procedures as established in such documentation as the CCI Notes and publications, and the US Department of the Interior Conserve O Gram. Such standards and guidelines will be reviewed and updated regularly.

• All of our museum collections of ethnographic materials and artifacts are currently on long term loan from the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre. Should any of our collections begin to show deterioration or reaction to the environment, the CMC and PWNHC would be contacted immediately. A course of action would then be discussed and implemented.

• As the KHS is not an art or artifact collecting organization, interpretive displays consist of didactic information backed up with just a few artifacts. This has eliminated the need for other than transient collection storage. The intent is to continue to have a small number of objects rotating from other museums or universities to Cambridge Bay.

• The KHS collection is not largely object based. More important is the knowledge held about customs, oral history, dance, music, and traditional knowledge. This is preserved predominately in the recollections of the elders which have and continue to be collected. Today the preservation is enhanced by audio and visual recordings along with books, written interviews, and film documentaries.