The distributed national collection in Wales, conservation on the national agenda

The concept of the Distributed National Collection is a Wales wide collections management initiative that embeds conservation and access issues for collections across Welsh museums and was adopted by CyMAL : Museums Archives and Libraries Wales (CyMAL) for the Welsh Government within the 2010 Museums Strategy. Collections and the stories they tell are the most fundamental of museum assets. In recent years there have been a number of important initiatives to better document, understand and care for museum collections. Whilst this remains by no means a comprehensive achievement with much still to be done, we now have an opportunity to take stock and to develop the concept in practical ways. This paper provides a summary of the evolution and adoption of the concept and identifies, via case studies, the challenges embodied in enacting a genuinely national approach to collections management