“Museums use their collections and the stories they can tell to bring people together, promote understanding and equip people with the facts and understanding that are relevant to the issues they are passionate about.”
Empowering Collections, Museums Association.
The objects themselves are only one aspect of a collection, without the information that is held with them there is a limit to their power to affect people. At the same time, museums do not hold all of the knowledge about an object. The memories and stories an item can unlock from an individual or community is often not recorded on catalogue cards or databases. It is this that is the real value of the collection and the role of the museum is to find the best way to use collections to unlock this information and record it for others hear.