ABSTRACT
During the 1970s, museums experienced a dramatic shift in their attitude toward collection documentation. For decades, record-keeping took a back seat to collecting and preserving objects and came to be viewed as a task of secondary importance. The organization of the filing system was left largely to the discretion of the first registrar of an institution, who in many instances paid little attention to what techniques were used at other museums or may have given little thought to creating a comprehensive system.
