"Each object is a unique and irreplaceable part of our history. As members of this Museum, and as the people in charge of its preservation and management, we have an obligation and a duty to care for this heritage and to see that it is preserved for the future", explains Museum curator Luz Alba Gómez. And the government itself has shared this view: the goldwork collection was declared a National Monument by the National Monuments Council, under the terms of Decree No. 1906 of 1995.

"The structure of some of the objects in the collection - dating back more than two thousand years - has suffered, making them extremely fragile and brittle, and this means that even greater care has to be taken when they are being handled. Conservation of the different objects is therefore governed by the way human and natural deterioration factors are controlled; in other words, the objects' whole human and natural environment. Controlling temperature and humidity changes, for example, or controlling insects, funguses and bacteria in the case of wood, mummies and ethnographic material, and organising prevention plans; all these things are part of conservation".

Preventive conservation is a fundamental aspect of the reorganisation of the new museum. Recognised techniques are used for keeping objects in a stable state, without interfering directly in the materials they are made of, although restoration has to be turned to in cases where the very integrity of an object is threatened.

The Gold Museum turned to international methodologies for ensuring that the collection was correctly handled during the transfer to the new premises, and there were various aspects to this. Inspecting showcases and environmental conditions in order to detect any change in objects (all museum personnel have been trained to recognise signs of deterioration in objects, and to inform the museum's conservation and restoration team); using a procedures manual when handling objects from the collection; correct storage and transportation of objects; and following disaster or calamity prevention programmes. All under the work premise that conservation of the collection depends on all members of the team.

Because just as the idea of the museum itself has developed, so there has been a transformation in the reserve collections, even though it is only now, with the new museum, that the technological and conceptual advances that have been made in this field over the years have come to light. These meant that when the new museum was being planned, this area would occupy a fundamental space in the design and structure, where practicality would be the main feature stressed, the idea that everything would remain in the same place for those responsible for them - storage, conservation, photography and maintenance. And that it should be completely safe, of course.

This is why today, after a long transfer process, the Gold Museum's reserves are rolling archives, perfectly air-conditioned and with spacious corridors and work areas, shelving, containers and locked showcases, all subjected to a rigorous and constant environmental control.

And although pottery, textiles and stone objects have been stored for a long time now in suitable packaging to ensure conservation, computerisation of the museum's reserves has led to a series of fundamental modifications which have resulted in a perfected storage system that assists the fundamental aim of any museum: researching its collection.

The reserves are currently organised according to the different cultures and on the basis of the form and function of the artefact studied. Thus, if an archaeologist is researching pre-Hispanic pottery vessels, he will find all archaeological zones in the stores. This makes it easier to search for information on the subject, which is the primary goal of museums, and makes it possible for researchers from various disciplines to approach and view the collection from different angles.

The new museum also boasts a whole top-security section, where the maintenance, restoration, cataloguing, support and photography areas record every movement objects make. It is a vault with restricted access, combined with a work area, where a series of analysts - each responsible for a numbered section of the collection - accompanies the researcher or archaeologist as he or she studies the object.

A systematic inventory is kept of everything as part of a virtual collection management programme, which allows the collections to be supervised by the museum's internal system, and in the future will enable various museums around the world to gain access to them and to share information. Thus, and despite the fact that a start was made more than twenty years ago on computerising the museum's collection, cataloguing has come to specialise in identifying the object, recording details of its acquisition, classifying the archaeological zone it belongs to, reporting details of what conservation the artefact has been given, descriptions and chemical analysis of the material the object is made of, its dimensions and location (the shelf, sector, building, drawer and showcase where the object is to be found), the origin of the object, associated documents (photographs and files), and national and international exhibitions at which it has been displayed. As will be seen, the databases will enable anyone interested in the subject and in Colombian archaeology to obtain the fullest information that is available about the objects.