Here in the West Midlands, when recording finds, we prefer to borrow them for 2-3 months. Other FLOs in different regions may have other preferences.

While your finds are in our care, we do take great care of them, and are stored securely when we are not working on them. 2-3 months may initially seem like a long time, but in reality, it is barely any time at all, maybe 1-2 monthly club meetings. It just gives you time to go out and find more wonderful finds for us to record.

There are many reasons why we have this preference. These include:

1. Help. At a club meeting, it is often just ourselves there. Whereas back in the office, we can consult with our experienced colleagues or reach out via email to a whole host of specialists to ask their opinions on a find. And if we have the find to hand, we can take any additional photographs that they may require.
2. Light. The background lighting at club meetings is often quite poor. This means that any photos taken are often quite dark, and there is a limit to how much ‘lightening’ or ‘tweaking’ you can do in Photoshop to make a poor photograph good. Inscriptions on coins and seal matrices really need good lighting to ensure that we have the correct reading.

   

   

3. Time. Recording takes time. Club meetings can be busy and stressful enough just meeting and catching up with you all, without having to factor in time to record all the finds that we see. Most club meetings last 1-2 hours, and often we can talk to up to 20 different people during that time. If we had include recording finds into the club meeting as well, then we (and you) would be there until they kicked us out at closing time.
   A skeleton record (photo, weight, measurements, date) can be done in 1-2 minutes, but a proper record can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 1 hour per find, depending on how much research needs to be done and whether we have a grid reference or not. It helps having the find to hand, so that you can look at all angles, especially if it is a tricky find, as opposed to working off a 2D photograph taken in a dark and dingy club meeting.
   When in the office (and can ignore the email and telephone), we can often record between 20-25 finds in a day. More if they get handed in with a grid reference. Producing the digital image can take between 5 to 30 mins depending on how complicated it is.
   In the past, when we have recorded at a rally, there was a minimum of 2 FLOs, working flat out all day, often working through lunch and up until the last car is ready to leave. On a busy rally, we can do skeleton records of 70-80 finds.
4. Space. Often all we get is a small table with minimal space to spread out. If we were to be recording, then we would need a separate table to set up the camera up (minimise any shaking to attempt a better photo.
5. Paperwork. With treasure, emails, phone calls (and finds), we have more than enough to do anyway without creating more work for ourselves. Any skeleton records created at either a club meeting or a rally, still need to be added to the database. By recording the find in the office, we can do it all in one go, saving time. The information is typed straight onto the database, the image added, and finished off with the findspot. Finally it is promoted, so you can see the finished record.
6. Equipment. We would need to carry all our recording equipment with us, i.e. camera, lights, tripod, callipers, scales, magnifier, recording forms, selected reference books. Although each by themselves don’t weigh much, all together it does add up and can make for a very heavy bag. Factor in any knee and back issues caused from time spent out in muddy trenches. Manual Handling protocols at Birmingham Museum advise that moving heavy loads should be avoided, where possible.

Back in the office at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, we have a dedicated photographic rig, a well lit room and a whole host of reference books at our disposal.

We have the time and space to ensure that we can sort out a high quality photo and record of your find. We have access to an XRF and an XRay machine, should we need them.

Near at hand, we have the main coin reference volumes (RIC, North, ABC and Hobbs), along with Dress Accessories, Meols, Colchester, Bailey & Butcher, Mackreth, Hattatt, and many more. More specialist coin reference volumes are available downstairs in the Curatorial reference library, thanks to the museum holding a numismatic collection. That library also contains many specialist research volumes and county journals that we do not have upstairs. 9 times of 10 we can track down the right book we need for most finds.

What can you do to help speed up the process: Supply accurate grid references for each find handed in. If this is done, then we can promote the record so you can see it much quicker once it is finished and we won’t be chasing you with a map several months later to mark where you found it. Each time we have to go back to a record to add the findspot, it takes at least 5 minutes, time we could spend recording a new find.