This kind of document is very important to any museum and its collection.
According to The New Museum Registration Methods:
Policies for managing collections provide the framework for decisions that determine the long-term development, care, and management of an institution's collections.
John Simmons writes in his article "Managing Things - Crafting a Collections Policy" from the January/February 2004 edition of MuseumNews:
The collections management policy is the institutional policy that governs everything a museum does to care for and grow its collections and make them available to the public.
And Marie Malaro, in A Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections, states:
A collection management policy is a detailed written statement that explains why a museum is in operation and how it goes about its business. The policy articulates the museum's professional standards regarding objects left in its care and serves as a guide for the staff and as a source of information for the public.
In other words, the Collection Management Policy (or CMP for short) guides the museum, and in turn its staff, in acquiring, caring for, and (possibly) deaccessioning its collections. It is a hefty document, covering a wide range of topics, from the scope of collections and ethics to acquiring and disposing objects, from providing access to objects (whether by loans or exhibits) to care and maintenance of those objects. By its very nature, the policy is a living document, which needs to be regularly and routinely revised and approved by a governing authority.
From the CMP, an institution can develop a Collection Plan (i.e. long-term plan on what to collect) and procedures on how to do specific tasks. For the last two years, I have been steadily forming the policies and procedures for the Archives & Collections Department here at The Petroleum Museum. However, those documents are only as good as the foundational framework that the CMP provides.
No comments:
Post a Comment