Tom hit it on the head. Docment, Document, Document, and if I did not mentionit yet Document......
Coming from a position of restarting a museum. nothing is more furstrating then comming into a museum and asking were something is and finding out that no one knows. Fruther more, be very detailed on your documentions. Once I did find a hand written log at the BF, I found entries stationg that a certaon individuald donated 1 sailor uniform. The person that made this entry did not even take time to try and identify which of the 50+ uniforms it was......
i would recomend steeing up a database to track this information. We are going to start with PastPerfect this year. This will help your tracking endevore as well.
Also when you start taking artifacts in, be sure to make your contributor specify if it is a donation or loan and explain the difference. This will solve the problem of people comming back and reclaiming items that were given to the museum.....
Remember. We may be non profit, but we are still a bissness.