A successor to Museum Registration Methods after the revision of its third volume was abandoned as impractical. Reports the most recent research and practice for improving the care, safety, and documentation of museum collections. Covers documentation, collections management, processes, administrative functions, risk management, and ethical and legal issues. Includes a glossary without pronunciation. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Rewritten, expanded and fully updated, MRM5 encompasses all that needs to be known and done when a museum accessions, measures, marks, moves, and displays or stores an object/artifact of any kind. MRM5 includes expert advice from more than 60 acknowledged leaders in their disciplines. New with the 5th edition are special teaching sections that challenge students and seasoned staff alike with questions about the process and procedures of accessioning and caring for objects.
Daniel B Reibel's Registration Methods for the Small Museum has been the definitive guide to registration methodology since 1978. Covering all aspects of the registration of museum collections, Registration Methods for the Small Museum provides practical solutions for any museum professional in a concise, readable manner. The new fourth edition brings the classic handbook up-to-date with the electronic registration techniques that are available for today's museum.
This revised edition of Things Great and Small is a comprehensive resource for preparing and applying collections management policies. Simmons reviews current ideas and literature on the subject, highlights the issues that collections management policies should address, and explains the pros and cons of choosing some policy options over others.
Hailed when it was first published in 1985 as the bible of U.S. collections management, A Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections offers the only comprehensive discussion of the legal questions faced by museums regarding collections. This revised and expanded third edition addresses the many legal developments—including a comprehensive discussion of stolen art and the international movement of cultural property, recent developments in copyright, and the effects of burgeoning electronic uses—that have occurred during the past twenty-five years. An authorative, go-to book for any museum professional, Legal Primer offers detailed explanations of the law, suggestions for preventing legal problems, and numerous case studies of lawsuits involving museum collections.
This book is a practical guide for everyone who is confronted with a collection that hasn’t seen any preventive conservation or cataloging before. It helps gaining an overview, defining priorities, and organizing the work in a way it is safe for the objects and the people involved. It defines “logical exits”, goals to work towards where the collection is in a state the next steps can wait without risking the progress made. Later on, readers learn to define their own “logical exits” that fit their specific situation. Compared to other books about collections management it doesn’t focus on the details of collections care, but rather on the big picture of managing such a project. It assumes that at the beginning there is nothing but the reader and an unmanaged collection, so that part of the project is to source money, material, and people to help. The second edition has a new chapter on setting up collections management systems, the original text was reworked and in parts enhanced, there are additional success stories in the last chapter with references to them in the text, and the bibliography now contains some resources for natural history, indigenous, and archaeological collections.
In recent years, many museums have implemented sweeping changes in how they engage audiences. However, changes to the field’s approaches to collections stewardship have come much more slowly. Active Collections critically examines existing approaches to museum collections and explores practical, yet radical, ways that museums can better manage their collections to actively advance their missions. Approaching the question of modern museum collection stewardship from a position of "tough love," the authors argue that the museum field risks being constrained by rigid ways of thinking about objects. Examining the field’s relationship to objects, artifacts, and specimens, the volume explores the question of stewardship through the dissection of a broad range of issues, including questions of "quality over quantity," emotional attachment, dispassionate cataloging, and cognitive biases in curatorship. The essays look to insights from fields as diverse as forest management, library science, and the psychology of compulsive hoarding, to inform and innovate collection practices. Essay contributions come from both experienced museum professionals and scholars from disciplines as diverse as psychology, education, and history. The result is a critical exploration that makes the book essential reading for museum professionals, as well as those in training.
Nomenclature 4.0 for Museum Cataloging is an updated and expanded edition of Robert G. Chenhall’s system for classifying human-made objects, originally published in 1978. The Chenhall system is the standard cataloging tool for thousands of museums and historical organizations across the United States and Canada. For this fourth edition, hundreds of new terms have been added, and every category, class, sub-class, and object term has been reviewed and revised as needed by a professional task force appointed by the American Association for State and Local History. This new edition features crucial revisions including: • A revised and updated users’ guide with new tips and advice • An expanded controlled vocabulary featuring nearly 950 new preferred terms • 475 more non-preferred terms in the index • An expanded and reorganized section on water transportation • Expanded coverage of exchange media, digital collections, electronic devices, archaeological and ethnographic objects, and more
Collection Conundrums: Solving Museum Registration Mysteries provides guidelines for investigating the oddities found in every museum collection - objects without record, identification or sometimes even a location - and determining what to do. Written by registrars Rebecca Buck and Jean A. Gilmore, editors of the best-selling The New Museum Registration Methods, this new volume contains essential information for museums large and small, new and old. The text offers solutions to the problems of old loans, undocumented objects found in collections, items lost in inventory, supplementary collections and more, as well as guidelines on how to keep problems from occurring in the first place. Features a history of registration methods and the standards for collection documentation and care, along with sample documents such as loan agreements, co-tenancy agreements, storage agreements and deed of gift. Recommended for everyone involved in collections planning and management.
Management and dissemination of the Intellectual Property (IP) assets maintained by cultural institutions is a key responsibility of caring for collections. Rights and reproductions methodologies are seemingly ever-changing with new technologies, additional distribution avenues, evolving case law, applicable court decisions, and new legislation. This new edition of Rights & Reproductions: The Handbook for Cultural Institutions marks the first time this valuable publication is available in print as well as digital. Building upon the guidelines, standards, and best practices outlined in the first edition, the Handbook further investigates current trends in rights and reproductions practices, notably expanding the discussion of fair use guidelines and codes, Creative Commons and RightsStatements.org, open access, social media applications, and the overall process of conducting rights clearances and obtaining permissions for the growing list of possible uses of a cultural institution’s Intellectual Property. Highlights of the second edition include: A new chapter devoted to fair use and open access Overall updates to applicable case law, rights clearance practices, and distribution partners Over 20 case studies outlining real-world examples from the authors’ experiences and practices at their institutions Expanded glossary defining terms so they are easy to understand Updated appendices with new references, resources, and court decisions Over 50 contract and document templates provided by the authors’ institutions The Handbook is the must-have, comprehensive resource for cultural institution professionals handling rights-related work, including registrars, rights and reproductions managers, archivists, librarians, and lawyers.
