Items in storage.

The request was successful.

Dear The National Maritime Museum,

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 I would like to request
the following information:

1. How many items does The National Maritime Museum currently store
that are not on display?

2. How much does it cost to store and maintain these items?

3. Have, or will these items ever be on display?

Please supply this information in digital format.

If you have any queries about my request please do not hesitate to
ask.

Thank you for your time,

Louise Smith

Christopher Gray, Royal Museums Greenwich

Dear Louise Smith

Thank you for contacting the National Maritime Museum with your email
request of 2 April 2014.

I confirm that your request will be dealt with under the terms of the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 and that we will send you a response
within 20 working days of 2 April.

Yours sincerely,

Christopher Gray
Museum Secretary

Royal Museums Greenwich
National Maritime Museum  |  Royal Observatory Greenwich  |  The Queen's
House | Cutty Sark

Greenwich, London SE10 9NF

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Christopher Gray, Royal Museums Greenwich

Dear Louise Smith

Thank you for your request for information on collection items in storage
at the National Maritime Museum. Your request has been dealt with in
accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our response
follows below:

1. How many items does The National Maritime Museum currently store that
are not on display?

The NMM collections comprise some 1.5 million items of a huge variety of
types. Numerically the vast majority of these collections are
light-sensitive, paper-based archival or reference-style collections e.g.
manuscripts, shipping records, master's certificates and similar. These
archival collection items are fully accessible to the public, on request,
through our reading room facilities at this link
[1]http://www.rmg.co.uk/contact/library-and...

The non-archival and therefore "displayable" collection items, eg.
paintings, ship models, figureheads and similar total 44,210. Of these we
currently have 2,906 objects on display in the Museum and 41,304 in store.
All the displayable items currently in store are also fully accessible to
the public, on request, also via this
[2]http://www.rmg.co.uk/contact/library-and... We provide online
access to over 250,000 catalogue records and over 90,000 images from a
selection of our collections at this link
[3]http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections...

2. How much does it cost to store and maintain these items?

The annual cost for storing collections that are not on display and are
not archival collections is £552k. This sum includes lease costs, service
charges, council tax, security staff and security measures, associated
collections management staffing, utilities, buildings maintenance and
racking costs.

3. Have, or will these items ever be on display?

The National Maritime Museum has a constantly changing programme of
temporary exhibitions, gallery displays, digital media activities,
learning programmes and loans to other organisations all of which lead to
a rotation of items from store to display and vice versa. It is not
possible to answer your question about past displays as records no longer
exist from decades ago. With regard to future display (and items in the
collection are under our care without time limit) this would depend on
programmes which are not yet planned - so the only answer I can give is
that we cannot yet know.

We hope that this response has been helpful to you. However, if you are
unhappy with the service you have received in relation to your request and
wish to make a complaint you should write to me, Christopher Gray, Museum
Secretary at the address below.

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint, you may contact
the Information Commissioner directly. (Generally, the Information
Commissioner cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted the above
complaints procedure provided by the National Maritime Museum.)

The Information Commissioner can be contacted at: The Information
Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9
5AF.

Thank you again for your interest in the Museum.

Yours sincerely

Christopher Gray
Museum Secretary

Royal Museums Greenwich
National Maritime Museum | Royal Observatory Greenwich | The Queen's House
| Cutty Sark

Greenwich, London SE10 9NF
direct +44 (0) 208 312 6637

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