Collection Conundrums by Rebecca A. Buck

Best known for their 1998 work, The New Museum Registration Methods, museum registrars Rebecca Buck and Jean Gilmore, set before us the delights of various under-documented museum objects, particularly old loans, a term which refers to “expired loans or loans of unlimited duration left unclaimed by lenders who cannot be readily located by the museum.” (p. However, while much of the collaborative literature across these disciplines addresses the mutual concerns of descriptive standards and controlled vocabularies, it is well to remember that responsible stewards of collections should begin by determining the deceptively simple fact of ownership of collections under their care.Įven the glamorous provenance research that leads to repatriation of international treasures begins with the examination of the basic techniques of collection documentation and the process of accessioning.

Practitioners of both disciplines put considerable energy into constructing surrogate records for the benefit of the many users who will probably never examine the original. One of the things that digitization of archives and museum collections has done is to shift the focus of archivists and museum collection managers from the document or the object to the record, or more specifically, to the metadata that comprises that record. Reviewed by Bernadette Callery, University of Pittsburgh Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 2007. Collections Conundrums: Solving Collections Management Mysteries.

Recommended for everyone involved in collections planning and management.Rebecca A. 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. 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. 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. Written by registrars Rebecca Buck and Jean A. 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.

Collection Conundrums by Rebecca A. Buck