Case Study: California Department of Parks and Recreation achieves expedited relocation and thousands of labor hours saved with Gallery Systems' TMS and Barcode Manager

Using Barcode Technology to Track Collections During a Relocation Move

The California Department of Parks and Recreation faced a major relocation challenge: moving and re‑housing millions of museum objects, archaeological specimens and archival documents to a new Statewide Museum Collections Center (SMCC). Tracking each container and recording new storage locations throughout the move was extremely labor‑intensive, so the department partnered with Gallery Systems and used The Museum System (TMS), TMS Barcode Manager and Crystal Reports along with barcode scanners and label printers to streamline the process.

Gallery Systems’ Barcode Manager integrated scanned barcode data with TMS and Crystal Reports, letting staff barcode containers, scan shelf→container→pallet sequences, and upload location changes directly into TMS. The solution enabled completion of the archaeological collection move by 2013, saved “thousands of hours” of labor, allowed immediate start‑up at the new SMCC, improved pallet‑level inventory control and storage space planning, and encouraged broader adoption of barcoding across the department.

California Department of Parks and Recreation

Peter Hanchett

Associate State Archaeologist