[10] In 1892, The Antiquary praised the Binchester collection as being "of first-class archaeological value" but concluded that overall "their museum reflects no credit on the University of Durham".

[12] The building had never been satisfactory as a museum, so it was decided to rationalise the collection, disposing of some of the more eclectic items of little educational value and moving the others to where they would be most useful.

[13] The university appointed Eric Birley as its first lecturer in archaeology in 1931, and he added material to the teaching collection from his excavations at Hadrian's Wall.

In 2014, the museum re-located back to Palace Green, to the Wolfson Gallery within the Durham University Library complex.

[14] Items of interest include the Bronze Age Houghall Sword, a Ewart Park sword from 700–900 BC found on the Houghall campus of East Durham College just south of Durham in 1996;[15] the internationally important Oswald-Plique collection of over 4,500 pieces of Samian ware, acquired by Birley in 1950, which formed a reference for Oswald's 1936–7 Index of Figure Types on Terra Sigillata and Stanfield and Simpson's 1958 Central Gaulish Potters, both of which remain standard reference books;[16][17] Roman artefacts from the Victorian excavations at Binchester and Birley's 1930s work at Benwell on Hadrian's Wall;[18] and the Lanchester Diploma, the first complete Roman fleet diploma to be found in Britain, discovered in Lanchester, County Durham, by a detectorist in 2016.