Accession number (cultural property)

In galleries, libraries, archives, and museums, an accession number is a unique identifier assigned to, and achieving initial control of, each acquisition.

Accession numbers are also used in botany, by institutions with living collections like arboreta, botanic gardens, etc., to identify plants or groups of plants that are of the same taxon, are of the same propagule type (or treatment), were received from the same source, were received at the same time.

[1] Herbaria and other botanic institutions collecting non living material also use accession numbers.

[3] In addition, departments or art classifications within the collection or museum may reserve sections of numbers.

Where the objects are unique, institutions normally need to retain the original number in some form as it will have been used in old references that are still of use in scholarship.