Design and implementation of protocols for monitoring the condition of vast collections: the case of the treasure of the Spanish Civil War

Cultural heritage institutions, such as archives, libraries, or museums commonly own collections composed of numerous objects, which, due to their large number are not subject to regular and systematic condition monitoring. In the industrial field, inspection standards to evaluate the quality of products have already been developed and certified, based on the evaluation of random pieces. The present research aimed to adapt one of those industrial standards to monitor the conservation condition of vast cultural heritage collections. We used, as a test subject, a numismatic collection composed of 22777 iron coins minted during the Spanish Second Republic. In our first inspection (2018), 1520 coins were sampled according to the industrial standard. Assessment and recording of the conservation condition was carried out through image analysis and coin weighing. In our second inspection (2020- 2021) no significant deterioration of the coins was detected. This second inspection also corroborated the effectiveness of the implemented monitoring protocol.