MoDiP, alongside the Plastics Subject Specialist Network, has created tools that will help museums, especially those without conservation departments, to understand the materials they have in their collections.
A curator's guide to plastics is intended for those with little or no prior knowledge of plastics and as a starting point for further exploration. It will help you identify and look after objects made of plastics, demonstrates how plastics have increasingly become significant, and suggests themes for their interpretation and presentation.
Identifying plastics toolkit has a physical resource, the travelling toolkit, designed to help curators and other museum staff to develop the skills for identifying the plastics in their collections, and Identification route map, which is an online flowchart-style resource using the look, smell, feel, and sound of a material.
Confronting plastics preservation aims to build workforce skills and share excellence and best practice in collections knowledge relating to the preservation of plastics objects across the museum sector.
A curator's guide to synthetic garments has been created in collaboration with DATS (Dress and Textiles Specialists network) and is designed to help museum to improve the documentation and interpretation of their collections of synthetic garments and make them accessible to the widest audience.