Guides
Part of Museum Trips: How to Plan a Visit to an Unusual Museum
Packing for museum trips: what to bring and what to leave
Planning museum trips around small collections? Here is what to carry past the front desk, what the door checks, and what to leave in the car.
Packing for museum trips is mostly a question of what you are allowed to carry past the front desk of a small museum or reading room. Pens, bags, food and ink are the usual casualties. Cameras and laptops are usually welcome but get recorded. Turn up with a pen and a rucksack and the first stop is the desk.
Edition note, January 2027: the rules below were checked against 36 CFR Part 1254, the federal regulation on using records and donated historical materials, linked below.
What to take away
Pack a pencil, coins for lockers, a warm layer, ID, and a clear bag, and leave your gloves at home.
- Pencils, not pens, and expect that rule everywhere that holds paper.
- Equipment gets inspected and logged, so arrive with a few minutes to spare.
- Some institutions require a researcher card before you touch anything original.
- Pack for a cold room, because collections storage runs cooler than you expect.
What the door actually checks
The rules are more specific than most visitors assume. The federal regulation on using records, 36 CFR Part 1254, requires a National Archives researcher identification card to use original archival material at a facility. Personal computers, scanners, tape recorders, cameras and other equipment brought into a building will be inspected.
In the Washington area a visitor completes an equipment log at the guard's desk, and the guard checks that log as proof of ownership before the equipment leaves. In regional archives and presidential libraries, equipment may instead be tagged after inspection. Not every research room allows personal notes to be carried in.
A volunteer-run museum will not have a guard's desk. It will still ask you to leave a rucksack at the counter, and it will still say no to a pen near a document.
The kit that earns its space
Museum day kit checklist
- Two pencils and a notebook
- Photo identification for reader's card
- Phone with plenty of storage
- A light layer for cold rooms
- Coins and small bills
- Printed list with reference numbers
- A pencil, and no pen anywhere near the bag.
- Coins for the lockers that are not free.
- A warm layer for cold storage rooms.
- Photo ID, for the rooms that ask before you handle originals.
- A clear bag, the type most rooms will pass.
- No gloves. Clean dry hands are what paper rooms ask for.
What to leave in the car
Ink of any kind, adhesive notes, food and drink, a large bag, gloves you brought yourself, and anything with a sharp edge. Cotton gloves in particular are often the wrong answer; many institutions prefer clean dry hands for paper, and will tell you so.
Copying equipment is a separate conversation
If you plan to bring a scanner or copy stand instead of a camera, ask before you travel, not at the desk, because institutions publish what they will accept.
One rule applies to scanners and copy stands. The National Archives' self-service copying guidance says a staff member must see the original material before copying. Restrictions can prevent copying at all for preservation, copyright or donor reasons.
The exception: different machines exist for bound volumes, microfilm and color originals, so ask which one covers your material.
Assume a small museum has none of that equipment and plan to photograph instead.
Clothing, briefly
Quiet shoes, no long scarves, nothing that swings from a shoulder into a case. If you will be in a store room, expect dust and choose accordingly.
See how to plan a museum trip from start to finish. Cold rooms and short winter hours interact, which is covered in the best seasons to plan museum trips.
