Activities and information needs in museums and a project undertaken by the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum to develop systematic solutions to problems in cataloging museum collections are described. Museum activities are grouped in three categories: (1) initial--acquisition, accession, registration, identification, and restoration; (2) ongoing--research, exhibition, and conservation efforts; and (3) terminal--de-accessioning. The ongoing are the most important of the three types of activities. In order to carry out these activities efficiently, all the information required for each defined activity must be available at the right time and place; however, at the present time there are no systems of nomenclature that are generally accepted as a basis for defining and identifying man-made artifacts. To meet this need, this project focused on the creation of a thesaurus for use at the Strong Museum. This standardized word list, or lexicon, includes words and phrases, and shows synonymous and hierarchical word relationships and dependencies. While it is not a panacea for all museum cataloging problems, it can serve as a common starting point in identification activities which are crucial to the cataloging process. A summary of the project, its rationale and processes, includes a description of the lexicon with examples. (MBR)