This landmark publication is the first to draw together all aspects of museum collections management in one handbook. It is designed for anyone with responsibility for a cultural collection and covers everything a collections manager needs to know. It describes professional practice in managing cultural objects and works of art, whatever the size and nature of the collection. The book includes essential information on: Legal aspects of collections Ethical issues such as due diligence and immunity from seizure Up to date concerns such as sustainability, crossing borders and financial constraints Loans, acquisitions, inventory and movement. The book describes all collections management procedures in a simple step-by-step process and is clear and easy to use with all procedures based on international museum practice. Examples of real forms, policies and documents drawn from major museums are included throughout the text and act as guides for any transaction. Readership: Packed full of practical information, advice and good practice, this will be essential reading for all museum professionals, curators of private collections and museum studies students.

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.

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.

An invaluable and practical introduction bringing together leading recent papers emphasising some of the major issues affecting collections management.

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.

Museum curators enter the profession with a specialist subject qualification and yet at some point in their career, many curators find themselves in charge of a range of collections outside of their expert knowledge. Interpreting, curating and caring for mixed collections demands of curators a wide range of knowledge and understanding. The Curation and Care of Museum Collections is designed to give curators the fundamental information and confidence they need to manage and care for all of the collections within their responsibility, regardless of their previous training and experience. Comprising two sections – Museum Collections, and Collection Development and Care – the chapters cover archaeology, art, history, military and natural sciences collections, as well as heritage properties. Every chapter in the book is focused on one type of collection, but all chapters in the collection management section contain advice on topics such as organisational philosophy, documentation, legal issues and materials in order to provide a useful and comprehensive guide to managing collections. The collection care section is structured in the same way, considering the issues of storage; display; handling; moving; packing; housekeeping; health and safety; emergency preparedness; and pest, pollution, environmental, light and vibration management. The contributors to this book are experienced museum professionals, each with their own specialism and a deep understanding of what it means to work in the context of mixed collections. Providing a highly practical guide, The Curation and Care of Museum Collections is essential reading for curators working in all types of museums, galleries and heritage sites, and for students of museology courses around the world.

There is a common misconception that collections management in museums is a set of rote procedures or technical practices that follow universal standards of best practice. This volume recognises collections management as a political, critical and social project, involving considerable intellectual labour that often goes unacknowledged within institutions and in the fields of museum and heritage studies. Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice brings into focus the knowledges, value systems, ethics and workplace pragmatics that are foundational for this work. Rather than engaging solely with cultural modifications, such as Indigenous care practices, the book presents local knowledge of place and material which is relevant to how collections are managed and cared for worldwide. Through discussion of varied collection types, management activities and professional roles, contributors develop a contextualised reflexive practice for how core collections management standards are conceptualised, negotiated and enacted. Chapters span national museums in Brazil and Uganda to community-led heritage work in Malaysia and Canada; they explore complexities of numbering, digitisation and description alongside the realities of climate change, global pandemics and natural disasters. The book offers a new definition of collections management, travelling from what is done to care for collections, to what is done to care for collections and their users. Rather than ‘use’ being an end goal, it emerges as a starting point to rethink collections work.

Collections Management brings together leading papers exploring some of the major issues affecting collections management. Providing information about initiatives and issues for anyone involved in collections management, Fahy identifies the main issues relating to collecting and disposal of collections and discusses why museums should develop appropriate documentation systems. Examining the status of research within museums, the various sources of advice relating to security and addresses the basics of insurance and indemnity, Collections Management is an invaluable and very practical introduction to this topic for students of museum studies and museum professionals.

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.

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.