 Post, Susan Barger from the FAIC. Go ahead, Susan. Hi. Hi, everyone. This is the third in our series of Management 101, Getting a Grip on Collections Management. Excuse me. I have a croaky voice today. And so I'll be doing the same thing. So the ground rules are you have to be at all four of the webinars in order to get a credly badge. And as soon as I get the list of who has multiple people, I will ask you who is there with you today. So please keep track of that. And it may happen that I don't get that soon enough today. And I will ask you next week when we do the next webinar on Tuesday. So I'll just start here. Excuse me. I'm losing my voice. We have a big thank you to IMLS for continued funding. We just got the National Leadership Award. And so we're really pleased about that. We'll be in business at least for another three years. We hope for many more years. So if you're looking for information, you can check out all these resources at the ConnectingToCollections.org website. I also want to point out that there are over 120 recorded webinars that are available in the archives. So you may think that we haven't covered something that checked that because there are a lot of resources there. And we're beginning to do closed captioning on them. If there's a closed caption version, there'll be an indication at the bottom of each webinar page. And it will give you a link to the FAIC YouTube channel, which is where the closed captions are. And you can like us on Facebook. You can follow us on Twitter. And if you want to join the C2CC Announce List, just go to this website. And you can sign up. And you can contact me anytime. This is my email address. And next week, we have a place for everything and everything in its place about collections inventories, which is the end of this series. And then towards the end of October, we're going to have a book webinar and caring for archives. So I now want to introduce you to Beverly Sutley. And Bev's been a registrar for over 25 years. And she's currently the registrar at the Palmer Museum at the Pennsylvania State University. She was the past chair of the registrar's committee of the now American Alliance of Museums. Used to be American Association of Museums. And she's a founding board member of the Association of Registrar's and Collection Specialists or Arts. So Bev, you're now on. Thanks, Susan. I hope I'm audible to everyone. Thank you all for coming today. And today, we're going to be talking about documenting your collections. And there's a form for that. I want to start by thinking about what is a museum? It's an institution that, using a professional staff, owns and uses objects, cares for them and exhibits them to the public. The cares for them has been highlighted because part of caring for your collections is caring for the records of those collections. When objects become separated from the information about them, they're less useful to us. So keeping good records is a duty of museums. I started researching for this. I haven't found a specific list of documents that must be kept. But I did find many different kinds of lists that were provided by a lot of the different references that I found, a lot of the different books and articles that I read. Marisi Maloro and Ildiko Pocani de Angelis, in their book, A Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections, do state that by law museums must keep complete and contemporaneous records of all collection objects. They cite a lot of case law in that book about museums who got in trouble for not having records. So we can infer from that that it's important to keep good records. The law does not, unfortunately, provide us a list of what we have to keep. We must infer that list. So I found, as I said during my research, I found a lot of useful lists with types of documents to keep. The primary sources I used were Maloro and de Angelis, a legal primer on managing museum collections, Elizabeth and Orna and Charles Pettit's Information Management and Museums, Rebecca Buck and Jean Almond Gilmore Editors, Museum Registration Methods Five, and then the International Council on Museums, Website and Spectrum, the UK Museum's Collections Management Standards. All of these provided different lists of types of records that need to be mentioned. On the slide that you're seeing now, these are some of the primary lists, object, primary records that everyone agreed need to be kept, or most agreed. Actually, only two kinds of records were found on every list that I found. The catalog records and condition reports. In my mind, proof of ownership or possession is the most important one. So that's what I've put up at top. But these records, evidence of legal ownership, the catalog record, pronouns information, activity of objects, and other specific records that are specific to your museum, these are the ones that I find to be the most important. Just as an aside, Museum Registration Methods Five includes a lot of specific records to be kept. And I'll be talking about those more at the end, but you can tell that book was written by a bunch of registrars. Overall, records should be made in a timely manner. That is, as soon as the information becomes available, they should be organized in such a way that information can be easily retrieved, securely stored, and physically preserved by using proper handling and storage methods. Today, there's not gonna be time to discuss all the records that might be kept. So I'm gonna focus only on the most common ones. I'm also not gonna provide a lot of examples or pictures of sample records. Sample forms can be found in Museum Registration Methods Five and Illegal Primer for Managing Museum Collections. Full information about those two books is available on the resources handout that will be made available to you guys to do who are attending. So I'm going to sort of structure this talk sort of as looking at records from the moment the object arrives at the museum to its life at the museum. So right here is my first incongruity. I said I wasn't gonna show you samples and here's a sample. This is an example of an incoming receipt. And every object that comes into a museum should be documented with a receipt, no matter why that object is in the museum. These receipts are called by a variety of different names. They can be called a shipping receipt, a temporary receipt, an incoming receipt, a temporary deposit receipt. All of these receipts do the same thing. They serve to document that a specific object has been left at the museum and who left it and when it was left. Most of the receipts that you see or that are kept by museums fall into one of two categories. The first is a very basic receipt. It's very simple like the one that's on the slide. It just gives us the who, what and when of the transaction when the object was dropped off. Now this receipt that you see before you would be printed on my museum's letterhead. So that would give the museum's contact information and then you see the receipt gets all that information from the donor, the person making the deposit. This receipt, you may also note only has a place for me or a representative of a Palmer Museum of Art to sign and date at the bottom. It doesn't have any, we don't have a place for the person leaving it to sign. So this is a really simple receipt and it should be accompanied by either a loan agreement or some other document outlining the conditions under which the piece is being left at the museum. So this is a very simple basic receipt. You can make this more complex and when you do that, you add more information. You add information about the care and handling that you're going to provide, packing and transportation arrangements that have been specified, who is handling insurance, what reproduction rights does the museum have and how should the object be credited. There should be a statement about ownership and what will happen in case the ownership changes while the object is at the museum. There should be information about the custody period, how long it will be there, how extensions will be handled and the right to return. I know a lot of people think that it should be unnecessary to state that the museum has the right to return the object that for any of you who have ever struggled in trying to find a donor, a lender and get them to take their object back, you know that it's important to have that stated on there. And when you do that, that statement usually says something like the museum has the right to return the object and if after a reasonable amount of time, usually a specific length of time has passed, it is assumed that it's a gift if the museum cannot get a response from the lender. Going on to this, so we looked at the both the very simple and a slightly more complex receipt, but for most of them, the basics are the same. You need the name of the object's owner or the person who's leaving the object if it's not the owner, full contact information. You need to have somewhere on there the reason the object has been left at the museum, the date the object was left at the museum, a description of the object so you can know what it is when you find it and the conditions under which the museum has accepted this object. Now, a very basic receipt that I showed you first does not act as any kind of agreement between the museum and the depositor. The more complex one that includes all the conditions that were described on the previous slide is sometimes used in place of a loan agreement. The very simple basic agreement does not receipt, does not need to be vetted by a legal counsel. However, if the receipt is being used in place of a loan agreement, then you really should have this document vetted before you start using it. I do wanna make a statement here that I am not an attorney, I am not qualified to give legal advice and I am not giving legal advice. I am, however, sharing with you my experiences over the last 25 years. So in general, it's always best to seek legal counsel for anything, any document you're making that resembles a contract. That is any document that has two parties agreeing that they will behave in some specific way or act in some specific way. So back to the receipts, again, the very simple one that is not in any way a contract, it's just a statement of activity. Does not, I don't think it needs legal counsel. If it's going to be acting as your loan agreement, then you do need legal counsel. Once the object, oh, what to do with the receipt? Oh, when you've got it, when you've made it, one copy with original signature should go to the owner of the object. One should stay at the museum to be kept forever. And other copies may go to other people within the museum who need them, such as a curator, someone in development, if it's an offered gift or purchase potential. Exhibition designers if the object is there for installation somewhere. Whoever in your museum needs one can have a copy of this receipt, but the museum should keep at least one copy in their registration files. So now that the object is here in the museum, we're going to be moving on to accessioning. So the museum has decided it wants to keep this object and it wants to start accessioning. This is probably too basic for many of you, but again, these are the five, five usually accepted methods that museums use when acquiring objects. Gift, purchase, request, field collection or transfer from another institution. Each of these has its own specific documentation needs. For gifts, the ideal of course is to get a deed of gift. This is a document that conveys ownership of the object from the donor to the museum. The ideal, this deed of gift, the elements of it are the name of the donor with full contact information, the name of the museum with full contact information. If you're going to be producing the deed of gift and printing it on your letterhead, which contains all that contact information, you don't need to duplicate that. The letterhead can serve as the contact, providing contact information. There should be a description of the materials that have been offered, and then several statements from the donor. One that the donor owns the object and has the authority to pass clear title to you. One that the gift, another statement that the gift is without restrictions or if there are restrictions, the restrictions need to be spelled out specifically in the deed of gift. And another statement that the donor relinquishes all rights he or she may have in the gift. Now, for those of you at art museums, this can sometimes be an issue when an artist is donating his or her own work. They generally do not want to give you all rights because their rights include copyright. And it's very unlikely that they're going to want to give you that copyright. So you may need to amend that part portion of your deed of gift to indicate just which rights he or she is or giving you. So be prepared to amend that as necessary. And then the donor needs to sign this deed of gift and date it. And the authorized representative of your museum needs to sign and date the deed of gift. Both copies, I mean, then both parties received a signed copy of this deed of gift. You'll notice there is an optional part on this which is the credit line to be used. And this should generally be whatever format your museum has decided to be standard. At my museum, it says, we had there's a space for it to say credit line, gift of and then a space for the person to fill in their name. However, if sometimes donors don't want to be use that credit line, they want to do something else that they write it in. And that's fine. You're just making a suggestion to them and then allowing them to change it as they like. Now, this is definitely a contract between two parties, the donor and the museum. So deeds of gift should definitely be vetted by legal counsel. Unfortunately, as all of us know, you can't always get a deed of gift. And that's when it becomes very important to remember that deeds of gifts are not required by law. The three elements of a gift, come on everyone can say it with me together, an offer and acceptance and physical transfer of the object. As we all know, those are the only things you need to have a gift be official. An offer can take the place, can take the form of correspondence from the donor with a clear offer to make the gift. And acceptance can be a letter from the appropriate museum official stating that the museum is willing to accept the gift. And the physical transfer of the object can be documented in the receipt that you issued when the object entered the museum. Now, sometimes you can't even get these things. If you don't have a written offer on file and you can't get the donor to return a deed of gift, Malaro and D'Angela in a legal primer offer this alternative. They say that you can send a letter by certified mail so that there is documentation that you sent the letter. And in the letter, you state that unless you are advised otherwise by a specific date, the museum will consider the object to be an unrestricted gift as of that date. And because the certified letter confirms that the letter was sent and received, that can serve as your proof that the person had the opportunity to withdraw the gift if they want. And I do wanna stress this again, the date of gift is not required by any law. It is simply a convenient way to document all elements of the gift and it has become the standard in museums. So as the standard, this should obviously be kept forever when an object is accepted as a gift and this record should be kept in the file. Additionally, some of you may be asked to sign IRS form 8283. This is when your donor wishes to take a tax deduction for the value of the gift that they offered. It's important to know that the museum is only required to sign confirming that the museum received the materials and also may be asked to indicate if the gift is for related or unrelated use. An unrelated use would be if you were given something that with the intention that you would sell it and use the money for the museum support. That's not considered related use because it's not directly serving the mission of your museum. It's also important to know that museums are not required to and should not provide appraisals on tax forms. That is not the preview of the museum and the donor needs to get an appraisal separately from the museum. Museums however, may be asked to provide proof of the date the donor relinquished control of the work. An incoming receipt noting the date that the work arrived serves this purpose. There may be instances, I know it's happened to me when a donor has decided late in December that they want to give a gift and it's not physically possible to have the gift arrive at the museum before the end of the day on December 31st. If they're out of town or far away, sometimes that's what can happen. In that instance, it is okay to assign someone to act as the museum's agent. That agent should be provided with a receipt that they can give to the donor, proving that the donor no longer had benefit of the work, that it was out of his or her possession and in the possession of someone acting on behalf of the museum. Copies of that receipt should also be added to the file. Moving on to the next method of acquisition, purchase, this is the easy one. Proof of purchase is a receipt, a bill of sale. Anything that shows that maims to both the seller and the museum and documents the amount paid and the date the money was paid. That's the easy one. The quests are not that difficult either, although sometimes it can be tricky. The documentation needed to prove a bequest is a copy of the relevant pages of the will. This should include the name of the person representing the estate as well as a description of the property to be transferred, the property that was left in the bequest. Many probate courts now require a receipt and release form that verifies that the bequest has been distributed. This form is generally provided by either the attorney handling the estate or possibly the probate court itself. This form shouldn't contain the signature of the museum official who signed to accept the gift or the person who has the authority to accept the gifts and bequests for the museum should sign that form and should date it as to the date the museum was received, the material was received. The next form of acquisition, accessioning, method of acquiring work is through field collection. And I must offer my thanks to Johnny Simmons for information on this topic. My entire career has been spent in art museums and we generally do not acquire works through field collection. So I had to contact John who has vast experience in this to find out just what you do need in to document field collection. His answer was that primarily what you need are permits. There may be a collecting permit for the state, federal or local authority that controls the site on which you will be collecting. If the material was collected in another country, you may need an export permit from that country and an import permit to bring it in. Sometimes a SIDES permit is required. SIDES is the convention on the transportation of endangered species of wild fauna and flora. And they have a list of species that are controlled and must be managed. And so if what you're collecting is on that list, you'll need a SIDES permit to import it into the United States. You will need a 3-177 declaration if you are importing animals or animal parts, importing or exporting them. And some controlled wildlife can only be imported through specific ports, a designated port, and then if you would need to get the designated port exemption. All of these documents are the proof that you have, that you have permission to acquire the pieces that you're collecting. And so these documents should all be treated as primary records and retained. Additionally, you may need to get a few more permits. If you're collecting a private land, you do need to get permission of the landowner. And it's best to get it in writing. It can be a letter or a formal contract, but you do want something that says the landowner is giving you permission to collect on his or her property. I thought it was also interesting that in some United States, some states in the US, if you're collecting animal or fish species, you may have to buy a hunting or fishing license. So those are some of the permits that might be necessary. As you are collecting them, you wanna keep copies of all these permits. They are the documentation that explain how you got the materials, improve that the museum owns them. The last sort of acquisition method that I'm familiar with is transfer from another institution. If your museum does this frequently, you will probably want to develop a transfer form. I think most museums don't do this very specifically, but do this specifically, but if you do do it frequently, then you'll wanna develop this form. A transfer form should include the name of the museum or institution from which the works are coming with all the pertinent contact information, the name of the museum acquiring the works, again, with all the pertinent contact information, and if printed on the museum's letterhead, the information's already there and doesn't need to be duplicated. It should include a description of the materials being offered, and all the same statements that were on the deed of gift that the donor institution owns the object and has the authority to pass clear title and that the gift is without restrictions or else exactly what those restrictions are and that the donor institution relinquishes all rights it may have had. It should be a place for the credit line and then again, signatures and dates for a donor institution or representatives and receiving museum representatives. This is clearly a contract that's being created between two parties and so these sorts of transfer forms should definitely be vetted by legal counsel. Now that we have discussed acquiring the works, we're going to move on to what happens when the work is being added to the collection. A catalog sheet or worksheet or accession sheet was one of the two forms that was agreed on by everyone that this should be part of the collection, part of the record of the object. You want to use this form to gather as much information about the object as you can. This should be very specific to your information. You need to gather the standard information but then you want to make sure that if there are specific bits of information your museum needs to collect that this form ensures that you gather all of that information. I found that the elements of the worksheet were divided into two groups of accession information and cataloging information. The cataloging information is basically what my museum would call the tombstone information, the maker or artist if it's a man-made object. Ideally, you would want to include the artist's full name, culture, life years, culture being where they came from, what culture they were part of and life years. Then you want a description of the object. If it's a made object, a title or description, the date it was made if you know, the materials that were used, the dimensions of the object. I include both inches and centimeters on my cataloging worksheet because we use them for different purposes. If it's signed, where and how is it signed? Where and how is it inscribed? If it is multiple, what addition is it? Then you want to describe and be sure to capture how it was acquired. You want the method of acquisition used, gift, purchase, bequest, et cetera. A donor or vendor's name and full contact information. We want to have the date it was received in your museum and the date it was either purchased or formally given if it was a gift or a purchase. Those two dates will be different. My museum usually received the object before we decide for sure that we're going to keep it so I keep both of those records. Then you want to have a general condition report. It can be very simple. More specific or in-depth reports can be attached. They will of course be kept. One thing to remember about the condition report it should be dated and the name of the person who made that assessment should be on the report. You want to capture the accession number that's assigned to the piece plus any other numbers that have been associated with the work. Those should also be captured. Those records should include the value. The date that value was assigned was assigned to the piece, who the appraiser was and if you have records of past appraisals you can also gather that information on your worksheet. Then copyright information. Who owns the copyright? What, if any, permissions have been given to the museum? How should copyright be credited in publications? All of these elements should be included on your worksheet for cataloging information. You also want to include the other was considered accession information. This is cataloging information and that includes provenance as far back as you can get it. Bibliography as many references are publications in which the object has been illustrated or discussed as you can find. And an exhibition history. Where has this object been shown? You also may want to use your worksheet to collect any other information that your institution regularly wants. For example, my museum is part of the Pennsylvania State University and so one of the bits of information we collect is the donor's class year if they were alumni at Penn State. There's a place for that on my worksheet and you can add any other bits of worksheet any other bits of information that you need. You can add just put them on your worksheet so that you can make sure you are regularly collecting that information. It's important to remember that these worksheets are primarily for in-house use and as such do not need to be vetted by legal counsel. They don't represent any kind of contract or agreement between your museum and any other institution. So you can use them as a way to organize the information that you're gathering but they don't need to be vetted. Once the object has become part of your collection it may be necessary to lend it to other organizations or you may be bringing objects in that are not going to be acquired. For those you will need to develop loan agreements. Loan agreements are records that should be kept and they should include the following elements. You will need the borrower's name with full contact information and I'm looking at this as an incoming loan agreement so this is an form your institution is generating. If it's printed on letter height again this information is already on the form and you don't need to duplicate it. You will then need the lender's full contact information and as many way methods of contact as you can get for them are good. You'll need to include the purpose of the loan. This can be, there could be a wide variety of purposes that you could be bringing something into your museum. It could be for exhibition. You could be considering acquisition of it. It could be a long-term loan. It could be for research, photography, conservation. There's lots of different information that can be, that needs to be included on, that could be a reason that the piece would be delivered to the museum. The dates of the loan should be included. If you're borrowing something for an exhibition you should include both the dates of the exhibition and the dates that you wish to have the piece on site since you need to include time for shipment to and from the borrower. You then need a full description of the materials you're going to be borrowing, the credit line that should be used, a statement defining who will ensure the object while it's on loan and what the insurance value is. There should be information about photography permissions on the form. Here I want to insert that we have found in my experience that oftentimes people neglect to check the boxes that say which photography permissions they're granting you. Our loan agreement now has a statement that says unless we are notified and writing to the contrary we assume permission to reproduce in museum publications in newsletters such as newsletters, gallery brochures, catalogs for publicity and educational purposes connected to the exhibition for which the piece is being loaned. There is a place if someone wishes to deny this permission they can do so but by putting it in this format we assume unless you tell us otherwise it's much easier to get permission to use the image for legitimate museum purposes. Any conditions on the loan included on the loan form these are often included on the back of the loan agreement and then there should be places for authorized signatures and dates for both the borrower and the lender. The conditions of the loan which as they said are often included on the back of the loan agreement should include descriptions of what care and handling will be provided or what care and handling are required. More details about the insurance rather than just how much and for how long it will be provided what the environmental conditions will be and how they should be maintained. There should be a statement about permission to clean or conserve and generally speaking that is a statement that says the borrower will not clean or conserve without providing the owner with a detailed written description of what they wish to do and getting written permission to do such work. And then a statement regarding the borrower's right to return the object and what will happen if the ownership of the object changes during the course of the loan and then information about who's responsible for packing and shipping. For more details about how these different conditions should be worded I would recommend checking out a legal primer for managing museum collections on page 43 of my edition. It has very good examples of wording to be used for all of these different conditions which might come up. Regarding the care and handling requirements I'd just like to say it's standard to provide the standard to promise to provide the same level of care that the borrower provides to a comparable property of its own. So that's the sort of language the legal primer provides to you so you know that you're using you're being as clear as you can be. Loan agreements are very clearly legal documents, contracts, they're governing behavior between two parties so these really do require legal, they should be embedded by a legal counsel. For objects leaving the museum like objects coming in there should be an outgoing receipt. Like the incoming receipt this documents the transaction and serves as proof that the museum no longer has custody of the object. That's very important if the object leaving does not belong to the museum. If you're returning it to the person who owns it then you're relinquishing your requirement to care for the object. If it's leaving your museum for another loan to another person or another organization then requirement to care for it is being transferred to that person. So the receipt should include the name of the person or institution to whom the object is being delivered again their full contact information why that object has been delivered to the person or institution the date they received it a description of the object again that should be what we call tombstone date medium that sort of thing and then there should be a place for the person or institution who is receiving it to sign and date confirming the receipt. For outgoing receipts I always send two copies with the object and ask that one copy be returned to me and I can keep the other copy for their records. Regarding outgoing loan agreements Penn State's Risk Management Office has informed me many times only one document can govern any transaction if there are multiple loan agreements in force in place one will invalidate the other Penn State's lawyers say that the last one signed invalidates any other earlier agreements. I know many institutions use their own outgoing loan agreement and if they wish to do that that should be the only agreement that is used. If they are willing to use the borrower's incoming loan agreement they may add an agenda listing specific concerns or requirements. Since the borrower generally sends the incoming loan agreement it is sent to the lender they can make any adjustments or add any information they need they sign and date it and send it back to the borrower who by signing and dating it also agree to any of the changes that the lender has made. Sometimes an outgoing loan agreement is necessary such as the borrower can not provide one for some reason or the one provided by the borrower is so unacceptable that the lender won't use it. In that case an outgoing loan agreement should include all of the same elements as the incoming loan agreement discussed earlier and as with incoming loan agreements outgoing loan agreements are contracts and should be vetted by legal counsel. The last type of form or record that I want to talk about oh wait a minute yes yes are deaccessioning records I'm only going to be talking about the process of removing an object from the collection I'm not going to be talking about disposal that's a different issue deaccessioning is removing the object from the collection and stating that the museum will no longer provide the same standard of care to the object that it provides to its collection objects once that has happened then deaccessioning is a different issue physically removing the object from the museum for deaccessioning I have not been able to find any specific form that is required by law what is required is that the museum be able to demonstrate that it is aware of issues surrounding deaccessioning of its collection objects that it has developed a process for determining if an object should be deaccessioned and that it has followed that procedure it's again like the deed of gift developing a form to document all of these steps is one of the easiest ways to prove that you're following your internal procedure disposal is what happens after the object has been deaccessioned and it too must be documented if the object common methods of disposing of objects are through sale or transferred to another museum or institution in the case of sale you will of course want to keep copies of the bill of sale if it's transferred to another institution you'll want to keep a copy of the transfer agreement and in both cases any outgoing receipt will also need to be kept document when the object left for possession anything else that any other type of written documentation that you have in conjunction with a deaccessioning and disposal should also be kept in the object file and should be included date when it was enforced and if possible a signature of whoever is in charge of whatever aspect of the deaccessioning the additional documentation is covering your in-house deaccessioning form the elements you want to include are a description of the material full description a statement that the museum has reviewed its files and a short has title to the material if it was a gift there were no restrictions on the gift or if there were restrictions what those restrictions are and how they have been addressed the deaccessioning form should also include the reasons that the museum has decided are acceptable for deaccessioning and which ones apply in this specific instance this can take the form of a checklist where you check off which elements are which elements are relevant to the particulars of this deaccessioning it should also reference the reasons acceptable reasons should have a reference to the museum's collecting plan and the criteria for collecting should be cited in that the object no longer meets those criteria the deaccessioning form should also keep record of what outside opinions have been solicited and what those people said about the object this is usually used to support the idea that the piece is no longer appropriate to the museum's collection there should be a place for someone on staff to make a formal recommendation to deaccession the object and the date on which such formal recommendation was made if the object was a gift there should be a notice about what the museum's policy is for notifying donors and if there is the museum's policy to notify donors when and by whom that policy was followed and the donors were notified finally there should be a place for name and signature of the person authorized to remove the object this should be a matter of record who is authorized generally speaking it's the director or someone else although I understand that in science museums it can be for just workability it can be someone else for some specific types of projects and then finally you should have the date on which the deaccession was approved again this form is for internal use and it's just ensuring that you're following your agreed upon procedures and so it is not a contract you're not making a promises to any other party so it does not necessarily need to be vetted by legal counsel although it wouldn't hurt forms and records that I wanted to talk to you about in depth there are many other types of records that are routinely kept in museums these are some of them and most of these were listed in the list provided by the museum registration methods book regarding current location records now most museums keep this information electronically in the collections management system and as I'm sure you're all aware the goal of a location record is to be able to locate any object at any time those do need to be maintained and updated on a very regular basis the next one listed is a master law master law this is frequently an acid free ledger with numbered pages in which accessions are handwritten the accession number basic object information method and source of acquisition should also be included I am still fond of the handwritten ledger although many institutions have now moved to print their records from their collections management systems and have them bound at the end of each year whichever form you choose to use the law should be kept in a format that cannot easily be tampered with or changed without leaving a record other records that are commonly kept include condition reports copyright information and or licenses and condition reports which I'm going to speak on a little bit more correspondence this can be anything at all relating to the object and again you want to try to keep it you want to make sure it's dated so that you can keep it it can give you a history of what information you're gathering about the object you want to have photographs of objects as possible these do not necessarily need to be reproduction quality but they should be used they should be appropriate for documentation so you want them to be clear and showing as many angles as you can especially for three-dimensional objects appraisals or other valuation documents should also be retained in addition to noting values on the worksheet that we talked about above you want to keep any paper documentation you have showing where you got those values you will want to keep insurance documents especially if there has been an insurance claim and you also want to keep record of any loss or damages that have happened to your objects or a little bit more about copyright it's important to know that museums do not automatically acquire copyright when they acquire objects so many times museums have developed a copyright licensing agreement so that they don't have to contact the artist any time they want to reproduce the work there are two basic types of licenses an exclusive license which gives the museum permission to use the image and bars others from using it for the same reason this would be if the artist gives you an exclusive right to create put his object on a poster if it's an exclusive license then no one else can make a poster using that image a non-exclusive license with the creator gives the museum permission to use the image but it also allows the copyright owner to give others the same permission I recommend I have always used a non-exclusive license and I like that one because it doesn't fringe upon the artist's rights to use his or her own work and because you are not asking the artist to give up that right it's sometimes easier to convince them to approve your licensing agreement it's important to remember that licenses are legally binding documents and therefore should be vetted by legal counsel another word about condition reports these can be loosely grouped into two different groups one is for collection management purposes that simply documents the collection so that anyone who is looking at that report can understand the current condition of the object obviously this should be signed and the person making the assessment should be signing the document and the date the examination was conducted should be included then there is a more technical condition report that can be used for object treatment and planning these often include possible causes of specific damage and sometimes include a treatment proposal and these sorts of documents are frequently created by object conservators there has been connecting to collections care webinar about this and for more information about that so that I'm not duplicating what they say I do suggest you take a look at the information that's on the connecting to collections care website about that condition report that condition reporting webinar that was done we're running out we're getting to the end so I wanted to share with you some final thoughts on June 7th of this year the Association of Registers and Collections Specialist held a Twitter chat about documentation the in this Twitter chat they it was a very interesting discussion that went on for quite a while but at the end of it the group came together to develop a list of characteristics of bad documentation first is the loss of context caused by incomplete documentation so incomplete documentation is the key here documents that were not fully filled out this happens when you don't have time to complete the record properly and you can say to yourself I'll come back to this but we're all busy and we all know we don't so incomplete documentation is really a problem another another characteristic is a reliance on institutional memory instead of written documentation I know that happens here at my museum where we actually have someone that's been on staff since the day the museum opened and we're always inclined to just go ask Barbara what happened but it's important to write this information down another characteristic is inconsistency where you collect some data for this one and different data for that one so that's another characteristic and then for handwriting I was very surprised at how low this came on the list of characteristics and bad documentation because it certainly hasn't been vexing to me at times when I just can't read the handwriting the group then went on to discuss the characteristics of good documentation and these were the top concerns the top ways of characteristics that they found all the records are dated all the information is complete the records are easily understood use standard terminology and are clear and precise they include good descriptions of the objects and good photographs and they include actually a history of the records when was this information added to the file and by home and again the last and most important one of the most important characteristics is legible handwriting we all want to be able to read it in 100 years so in conclusion the general final thoughts about this in general try to be clear be permanent that is use appropriate papers inks back up and migrate your electronic records be legible and be as comprehensive as possible start today to make clear and clean records if you haven't had them before start with the next thing that comes in to your office in conjunction with that create a clear documentation policy and train everyone who uses your documents what their responsibilities are if you are one of those people who have lots of messy old records create a schedule to clean up the old records and as you do so create a history of those records as you go and finally be kind to your future self what would you want to be able to find in 100 years that is the reason we are keeping these records think about your future self and try to be kind that is the end of my formal presentation so now I think we can start looking at some of your questions and I don't know how to do that Susan I will be your moderator and there are a lot of questions so I am going to kind of go back to the beginning and so the first question that came up was what to do when there are historical items that were taken in many years ago without a donor agreement or transfer of title form and I am assuming the question is and you want to keep them if you don't have a donor agreement transfer of title anything like that that can be really problematic if you do have anything at all from the donor in writing or from the depositor in writing that can sometimes be used to prove intent that the person one intended to give it to you if they are really old this is a really a long difficult problem that many institutions face I am thinking that this might fall under abandoned property if you don't have anything that shows that the donor intended to give it and you can no longer find the donor it may fall under abandoned property issues and then you would need to look up the abandoned property law in your state I believe the museum registration methods book contains a list of states with abandoned property legislation and that may be the best place to start looking yeah okay and Devin Horne says how often should you have your forms reviewed by legal counsel I think unless you hear about major changes in law you are probably not going to have to have them reviewed very often at all they would be reviewed if you want to make a change in the conditions on your forms or if you have a feeling that they are incomplete you may want to try to do that one thing I do want to say I forgot to make a note about it was legal counsel is going to try to make them much more complicated than you want them to be so you really have to work to make sure that the language remains simple and clear and there is one aspect of legal counsel advice problematic for me legal counsel always wants to include a statement regarding where adjudication will take place in the event of conflict that the agreement will be held to the laws of a particular state the Pennsylvania State University is an instrumentality of the State of Pennsylvania and we cannot agree to be governed by the laws of any other state so if two institutions that both cannot agree to be governed by the laws of another state are trying to make an agreement having that statement on the agreement can be very can be problematic what we have discovered is that if the document remains silent that is it doesn't state what the governing law will be we can usually get it through our legal counsel so that is something that your attorney is going to want to add you are going to have to work with them to explain the issues and see if they can work around that how do you decide who is responsible for completing the various stages of paperwork particularly for a very small 2.5 person staff so as not to overwhelm anyone but also keep the process clear without too many gaps for another person so that they can cause a to-do list to be forgotten or left out to me if you are a 2.5 person staff you have all got too much to do some of these documents I would say most of them if they are involving the museum in a contract of any kind promising the museum is going to do something with the director the director probably should be the one to sign off that does not mean the director has to fill out all stages and you could have whoever is responsible for whoever knows the most about the different aspects of the agreement fill out those aspects of it and then simply give it to the director with any notes that he or she would need to sign so dividing the people who know the most about the particular topic fill out that portion of the agreement there have been quite a few discussions and side discussions and questions about porch donations or draw up people that leave stuff on your doorstep and questions of how you should deal with that are they questions are they leaving them are these things that are being left and someone at the desk accepts them or is it stuff that's literally left outside the museum at night when no one is there about stuff that was left on the porch overnight it's my understanding that stuff that's left on your porch overnight that no one has taken no one has touched can be considered not your property and therefore not your problem and if it's left on the porch with no way to contact anyone to come get it it's my understanding that you can get rid of that stuff if you want to keep it however that's when it becomes problematic because then you do need to find an owner and I don't know what to tell you about stuff that's left overnight I've just never been in that position before I'm sorry not very well what if you're a government agency what kind of nonprofit form letter would it receive not a 501c3 since government's not a 501c3 I'm sorry I don't quite understand that question what he's asking is if you're a government agency and you need to receive something what kind of form do you need to provide to a donor I think in case they want to take a tax deduction I think you'd have to consult with your lawyers I would consult with legal counsel regarding tax deductions all that the museum has a responsibility to prove is that the museum received the materials so you would be signing the 8283 saying that you received the materials and that's all you're saying I'm not aware that the museum has to prove that it's a nonprofit I think that's up to the donor who is trying to take the tax break to get to say that I don't know what a government agency is but it's clearly not profit so I don't think it's up to you to provide that information but I may be mistaken so yes I agree with Susan that might be a good time to go talk about that just to figure it out once and for all right and I think that's right that it's really up to the donor to once they have their tax documents and they have to do the tax documents if we receive a gift but are only accessioning a portion of the gift into the permanent collection list still lists all the items on the deed of gift or only those pieces that will be utilized long term by the museum you definitely need to provide the donor proof that you accepted the that you accepted everything in the gift you may want to on your deed of gift when you're listing the material accepted have two different sections materials accepted for the collection and then materials accepted for non-related use so you would be listing them all but not being clear that you don't intend to keep them all for museum use for permanent collection use I'd like to go back just a moment about the porch donations if somebody if you do want to keep that object yes you should definitely document when it was received as much as you know about it when it showed up what day, what time, who found it if there's anything with it you want to keep any copies of any notes or letters and then you can start the abandoned property clock saying that this was abandoned and then you follow your state legislation your state legislation for abandoned property there was a question that kept coming up about if you commission an artwork what kind of record from an artist directly from an artist what kind of records do you need but you will need a formal agreement a formal commission document that states what each party is going to do and within the formal commissioning agreement it should state what you expect the artist to provide and what the museum will do as far as payment for it oh dear my computer just went as far as payment for it and what your rights will be using it this is definitely a form that should be vetted by an attorney and I believe that you can find sample forms the registrar's committee of the American Association of Museum on their website which is on the resource page does have a button for sample documents and you may be able to find a sample document there you may be able I'm not sure but there may be sample documents and museum registration methods five and a legal primer managing museum collections so the contract itself will become your document in that case and I know of cases where the artist who was commissioned didn't produce what was agreed to and that caused a lot of trouble but the museum was able to reject it because they had the proper documentation right yeah we generally do not use a receipt as mentioned at the beginning when an object enters our custody a deed of gift acts as that should we also be using a receipt as well and then there were a lot of questions that said yes there's a big difference yes there is a huge difference you should be issuing a receipt for every object that enters your museum not everything that comes in is coming in as a gift as an offered gift you may just be borrowing something for exhibition or it may be offered gift that you choose not to accept so you really do need to institute a receipt policy and not use your deed of gift as your receipt those are two different actions and they should be you should have documentation for both of them okay yeah and there were questions should a deed of gift also be treated like a receipt and I think you just answered that no there are two different documents providing covering two different activities yeah what forms are acceptable to have an electronic signature versus original signatures and what forms require an original signature boy things are changing so much these days I'm sorry I'm not familiar with case law I don't know if any cases have gone before the courts yet regarding this I tend to be conservative on these matters and always want always want an original signature if you want to be the one who tries it and let us know how that goes then I think electronic signatures are becoming more and more acceptable perhaps if I knew the other party and was confident that they were going to honor their contract or their agreement that I might be more comfortable allowing an electronic signature okay does Palmer Museum use fair use for reproduction of works of art I'm very conservative when it comes to copyright law I don't want to ever infringe upon an artist's rights so we do not use fair use as the reasoning for reproducing works in our collection I've been the bad guy so many times by saying we don't have permission to use that image and so we pick a different image but we don't rely on fair use I should amend that we have not rely on fair use except for our online catalog where we are sort of assuming fair use in that case there's a question did your graduate work for your occupation require learning a foreign language that's an interesting question I did not only because I went to a kind of weird program and I'm very old and back when I was in graduate school a computer was considered being computer literate was considered a foreign language so I did not have to I did for my undergraduate have to have a language requirement though for lawnic agreements what's the best way to amend the form if something changes such as the end date is written permission from the lender enough or do you need a new agreement I would say written permission from the lender is enough it should be signed by both the lender and the borrower saying something a form saying borrower wishes to extend the loan from this date through this date and that the lender agrees to it and both sign and date it and that should be adequate yeah are you required to contact a lender when the loan period ends is the museum required yes yes it's your responsibility to contact them to begin return arrangements right I once worked with someone who lent a museum something and they failed to identify her and when I saw there was a loan agreement that was out of date I called the curator and asked him about it and he said oh we thought that she was going to give that to us anyway so we just accessioned it oh my goodness yeah they had to deaccession it very fast they didn't get it that's pretty horrifying yeah exhibit a requirement should be mentioned too in the loan agreement such as display in a locked case or books must be displayed in a ported yes those should be included in the conditions of the loan agreement and if they're not written out spelled out in the incoming loan agreement that the potential borrower sends you you should add a sheet a document stating what those agreements are what those conditions are yeah our museum has moved locations a number of times in the past 20 years and quite a few items have no paperwork except for a letter from us thanking them for bringing their donation to the museum with no paper trail and a shrinking storage area what are your feelings on deaccessioning we had a really we had a really good webinar in deaccessioning from John Simmons last fall so take a look at that also I'm going to let that stand as the answer then okay alright if a museum makes a loan to another museum and the outgoing loan document is required by one incoming loan document and is required by the other will one document invalidate the other based on what they signed or when they signed according to the attorneys here at Penn State University yes the latest one the last one signed is the controlling document so that would invalidate the earlier signed document uh-huh according to those attorneys yeah then there are a bunch of things about founding collections and how to document those on yes a founding collection items it's very important to document the first time it's found when it was found and by whom it was found and that can help you establish a I don't remember the Latin word but not before this time or not after this time so it's been on site at least since this date and when you're following abandoned property laws trying to claim ownership of it having that start date is very important and then where should you file the deaccession forms in the accession folder for that item or elsewhere I would file them in the accession folder for that item if you may want to start a deaccession folder and keep copies of that so you have all deaccession information together that's really an institutional choice though and you need to file them in such a way that you can find them when you need to be able to produce them so that's an institutional decision decide how work best in your institution and follow that and there were several questions about about how many forms you need if you have a deaccession form or a loan form or whatever how many do you need do you keep them in different places I personally always keep forms with the object record so that they're there when you're looking for information about that object okay I just put up the evaluation link and these are really important they help us to see how we're doing they help us to make plans for new webinars that might be helpful to you so please fill it out thank you and then what about the donors when you're deaccessioning so there's a question here that says I've read discussions on the registrar's committees lists and some pointed out that notification of a donor gives the false impression that the donor retained any sort of legal interest in the objects after donating is precedent yes it's hard to convince a donor that they're being notified simply as a courtesy and not because they have some say in it that should be a matter of institutional policy that your board of directors your trustees should decide whether you are going to notify people and how you would do that I think the language used in whatever form of communication you use should be very careful to make sure that they understand that this is not giving them permission to say something about it just to let them know that it's happening right so this is copyright and fair use is it also for any educational materials such as coloring images that were made by the staff or are those automatically part of the institution so imagine this is materials that are made to go with an exhibit that are based on whatever in the exhibit fair use is a really fuzzy concept I think that's the term that Marie Malaro I know to go to DeAngelo's use that is really if it's coloring pages I can see might be transformative and therefore derivative work and you don't need to get permission I think the one thing to be cognizant of and to try to think about is is this going to injure the artist in any way and I think it really kind of depends on what use you're making of it I would recommend checking with a legal primary managing museum collections for their section on copyright I think it's very helpful and might explain it better than I have and I think sometime next year we're going to do a a series on legal issues that will include copyright so keep an eye out for that I think that's a great idea and we're doing it with ARC so I'm real pleased about that and let's see do you keep digital copies of these documents as well as paper copies in the physical files some I'm speaking only for myself here at the Palmer some records we do keep digitally but most we keep in hard copy that's partially because we don't have staff to go and scan everything to get it digital maybe someday we will but if you're keeping records digitally you need to remember that you will need to migrate them and maintain them as formats change and we have one person who says I have a room full of stuff given over the years how do I start keeping records I start at the beginning I would say start with what's closest that you can manage most easily and see what you can gather about it and start creating your documents and take a look at last week's webinar with Angela Kipp she gave a lot of very concise advice about how to deal with that kind of stuff in our collection it's my understanding we have several items that are long-term loan to us and they are expected to be given as gifts after the loaner dies is this a common practice yes it is it still means that you need to maintain those long-term loan agreements there should be regular renewal dates on that so you stay in touch with the donor the lender the potential donor but yes I'm afraid that is pretty standard I think that's all the questions if I missed any I apologize and I'll send all of the questions from both chat boxes to Beverly and she can look at them to see if there's anything else that needs to be answered and so next week we're going to have Maureen McCormick and we're going to talk about inventories and that'll be the end of this credley course and as soon as I get the list of who's in multiples I will send you email like I have in the past weeks and ask you who's there with you and just to remind everyone the ground rules for getting a badge or you have to have been here all the time so thank you very much but this is fabulous and we will see you all next week and if I don't get this up today I'll get it up next week because I'm going away and I'm not going to do any work while I'm gone so have a good weekend see you Tuesday and I think that's it thank you