 Now it's my pleasure to turn the floor over to Jenny Arena. Thank you so much. So as Adam said, I'm Jenny Arena and I'm with Heritage Preservation. We're so glad that you're joining us today. It looks like about 147 people have logged into this meeting room today. We've got a really special webinar in store for you. But let me start by giving just a quick introduction to the community and these webinars. So the Connecting to Collections online community was originally created in cooperation with the American Association for State and Local History and was funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, moderated by Heritage Preservation, and Learning Times produces both the website and the webinar. The goal of the online community has always been to help smaller museums, libraries, archives, and historical societies quickly locate reliable preservation resources and also to network with their colleagues like you guys are doing today. To help you do that, we've compiled an extensive list of online resources and they're broken up by topics. Let me grab this. So this is just a screenshot of the website and you can see our topics menu over here. And we also try to host regularly scheduled drop-in webinars like the one you guys are joining us for today that doesn't require pre-registration on topics that we hope you'll find useful. A recording of today's webinar and of all our webinars can now be found on this toggle right here, webinar archives. And we also break them up by topic in the topics menu as well. So we're really excited about today's webinar. It was created in partnership with the American Association for State and Local History Small Museum Committee. And before I introduce our speaker today, I'm going to hand things over to Maggie who is with the Small Museum Committee and she's got some great things to share with you guys and great resources. So Maggie, let me pull this out of the way and I'll hand things over to you. Okay, good afternoon. My name is Maggie Marconi and I am the administrator of the Follett House Museum in Sundesky, Ohio. And I am the chair of AASLH's Small Museum Committee. We are thrilled to be partnering with Heritage Preservation here at the Connecting to Collections Online Community, the American Association for State and Local History and the Small Museum Committee have a lot to offer. And I would like to invite you to check out some of our available resources. Please visit aaslh.org for information on how to become a member of this incredible organization. While you're there, I hope you'll check out the Standards and Excellence Program for History Organizations, which is called STEPPS. STEPPS has some fantastic information to help museums set up collections, policies and procedures. The Small Museum Committee also has a page on the AASLH website. I encourage you to join our listserv and to check out our blog and all of those are listed there on the screen in front of you. If you would like further information, please be sure to include your contact and email information in the survey that will be administered at the end of today's webinar. I would also like to extend thanks to Joanne Lindstrom, who created the content of this webinar. Thanks, Jenny. Thank you so much, Maggie. And all these things are also on the online community website associated with this webinar. And so you'll find them when we post the recording of this webinar there as well. So let me go ahead and introduce Bruce, our speaker today. He has kindly agreed to talk to us about collections management policies and we really couldn't be in better hands. Bruce is a museum administrator and a collections manager with 39 years of experience in the field. He has authored numerous guides as well as books and has served as a consultant in more than 50 museums, historical societies and professional organizations. He was also an adjunct professor for 20 years at Cooperstown Graduate Program in the Museum Studies Master Program. And he is, Bruce, am I correct in saying you're currently the acting executive director at the Newport Restoration Foundation? Well, actually I'm in an interim period. I finished up my three months during the summer. Now, unfortunately, our directors headed back into the hospital for a couple of weeks. But I have my hands full to put it that way. But you are director of collections for Newport Restoration Foundation. Great. Well, Bruce, I'm going to hand things over to you. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this today. Well, you're quite welcome. I'm very glad to have this opportunity. And I thank Maggie Marconi for organizing it and Joanne Lindstrom for putting the material together and allowing us to use it today. So I'm very pleased that I had all this great help to get it going. Welcome to everyone to the second webinar in this step series. I'm very pleased to be with you today. Actually, this probably isn't the second. Old script. When you're juggling on the high wire, you need to stay on track and be focused on where you're going, right? Well, a collections management policy provides focus for the staff and board with regard to collections. If you don't have a policy, or if you've used one from another institution without giving it much thought, or you have one that you don't use, you're more likely to be distracted by the day-to-day ethical issues that a collections management policy is designed to address. And I just want to let you know, as you're looking at the screen, don't be alarmed. The juggler is not using museum objects, although, of course, some of us have other categories like education materials, properties. And it's good to see that he's wearing typical museum evening wear garb while the juggling is going on. The two goals today are to elevate museum collections management policy from a perfunctory document to a practical one, something that's used by your organization to help support and defend difficult decision-making. So you're not just out there on your own, but you've got something to back you up. Believe me, I've been in that situation more than once. And second, be ready to create a temporary deposit form and use it within the next six months. That's very important also, because it will cover today policy versus procedure and what's the difference in collections management policy. Again, I have one, essential elements of a collections management policy and temporary deposit forms. Okay, so now we have a poll to find out about everyone who's watching today. And if you'd like to participate in that, it'll help a little bit to see where folks are from and what kind of an audience we have. And perhaps try to aim things a little bit one way or the other, although the presentation I think should be helpful just about everybody who's interested in this topic. So it seems that we have a lot of people from organizations that are other. So that's good to know, makes it a little hard to know exactly what I should be trying to tell you. But I think we're on the right track, so don't worry about that. We have some board members, which is always very helpful. Lots of staff members, some volunteers. And quite a few people who have been with your current organization at least for fewer than five years. So that is often the kind of situation that lets you know that you need to put together a collections management. But I've seen plenty of organizations that have been working on this for a while and it's still necessary. So you've got plenty of company, whatever your situation is. Okay, that's great. All right, well, running a museum is hard work. I think all of us know that. And it helps to have good tools. Having the right tool makes things work a lot better. And so it helps to have a good tool, but you need to put it to work once it's all done. Now, policies versus procedures, what's the difference? This is something that's really important because if this isn't made clear as you put a policy together or refine one that you have, you can really get bogged down in information that just doesn't belong in the policy itself. Policies provide the operational framework within which the institution functions. Provide formal guidance to coordinate and execute activities. They help focus attention and resources on high priority issues, aligning and working efforts to achieve the institutional vision. And one thing to keep in mind too, something like a collections management policy is generally something that's adopted by the board if you have a board. Otherwise, whatever the governing body may be so that it really has some authority behind it and that's very important. There can be administrative policies that are formed and that's a separate issue. We won't really get into that right now. So let's move on to procedures. Procedures are the operational processes required to implement institutional policy. It can be formal or informal, specific to a department or applicable across the entire institution. And of course everything you do can be expressed in terms of procedures. And generally for collections, if you are able to do it, it's very helpful to have a collections procedures manual, which tells you all sorts of things like how to deal with loans from start to finish, how to fill out the worksheets or the forms on the computer that you may have for cataloging, and pretty much anything you can think of. And generally if you look through the manual like that, you come across a lot of things where you realize somebody must have come across a problem here because there's a kind of unusual procedure that's described, but there it is. So anyway, that's the difference and you don't want everything just mashed all together or you end up with a very unwieldy document. So the policies tell you what the organization should be doing. The procedures tell you how to do them. Occasionally there are some exceptions to that and it depends to some extent on how your museum operates. There are certainly a lot of differences between museums and all the kinds of surveys that I've done. It's great to see that they're all unique and why they came out to be the way they are. So don't be surprised if your needs aren't the same as everybody else's, but you can certainly use guidelines for all kinds of sources. So this little graphic on the screen might be helpful just in terms of putting the policy at the center and the procedures around. And I've already mentioned a few of these, but procedures for cataloging, process for inventory, which we'll mention a little bit later, keeping track of objects, going on exhibits, steps to fill out loan forms and so forth. So generally the procedures tend to be many in number. And another important thing is that they can be changed by staff decisions. The policy is changed and adopted by the board. So you don't want to be coming back every few months saying, well, we need to change the policy. The board will wonder if you know what you're doing. So get a jump on that to begin with and it should be good for a number of years. The first element of just about anything involving a policy and sometimes even procedures is a statement of purpose. And to that you added a description of collections, not just the mission statement, but also information about the collection and the goals for the museum pertaining to the collections. Here's an example here. The Henry Clay Memorial Foundation will present a permanent historical collection to accomplish its goal of presenting historically accurate view of life at Ashland. The collection may be seen as having two parts, historical and interpretive. The historical collection will consist of objects and documents owned and used by Henry Clay and the Clay family descendants who lived at Ashland. The interpretive collection will consist of objects not belonging to the Clay family, but having historical significance interpreting the life of Henry Clay, the Clay descendants and life at Ashland in the 19th and early 20th centuries. That's a really good statement of purpose. And it pertains to a historical house, which is a kind of institution where this really lends itself to pretty precise definitions. If you work in a historical society or other kinds of more general museums, you may need to be a little more creative and inclusive of many kinds of objects. But just see how that goes for you. And note that this comes from Marie Malero's book on legal issues in museums, which is a very important tome to keep on hand. I'll probably mention that again. Okay, other things to include in the policy, acquisition of objects. What will you accept and not accept? Do you accept buildings, land? And something to keep in mind here, maybe your institution would want to consider buildings as collection items. Many museums that would be pretty radical and I'm not going to go into any arguments for or against that, but it's just a point to consider. Also, the forms used to process incoming collections, you don't have to put the forms in the policy again. You know, if you need to change one little thing, you have to get the board to adopt it. So keep it simple. Deaccessioning always a frightening topic, to say the least. Once something goes out the door, it's gone forever. And you've got to be awfully sure that you're not going to be viewed as the person who really made a big mistake in the museum. So again, what procedures do you follow, who is authorized to deaccession and generally this chain of command there. It's quite important. Where do objects go when deaccession? There can be a lot of choices there. Sometimes museums just stick to one method and that's it and that's fine. That suits your purposes. What are the criteria for deaccessioning? So that's as well something you really have to stick to. Essential elements of collections management policy. Incoming and outgoing loans or I tend to prefer sometimes to put it lending and borrowing. It's really the same thing. It just depends on the sort of picky language you like to use. To whom do you loan? Do you just lend things to anybody? Do you just lend to accredited museums? And for what purposes would the loans be? Do you lend to community organizations and do you accept permanent loans? I would say right off the bat for that one. Don't do it. If you can keep from accepting sort of nebulous long term loans so much the better. Objects that are placed in the custody of the museum. You need a temporary deposit form and we'll get to this more in a few minutes. I've already mentioned it a couple of times. And how do you cope with abandoned property? I think all of us have run into this and it can be a real headache because not only do you not know who has the title and ownership of the object that's left in your hands or on your doorstep sometimes literally but you really may not know anything about the object itself and what's the purpose of having it. There's no story. That's something that I comment on with our board all the time. We're always looking for connections and stories. That's what makes it all worthwhile. All right. For records, how do you maintain records for the collection? At least roughly where the responsibilities lie for that should be mentioned in the policy. Maintaining records is a large part of the museum's responsibility and the trustees have been sued and most people who are on boards have heard about some of these stories and believe me, most of them are true and certainly frightening and so you really have to be sure that the records are complete. And in small museums, I know this can be a huge problem because often in the past the records haven't been kept all that well and sometimes they're even multiple cataloging and record systems and all I can say is, again, you've got a lot of company but it's something that you just have to figure out how it's going to be dealt with and getting it down on paper will help to ensure that this is not going to keep happening so that's pretty important as well. Insurance, explain what type of policy you have for the collection and the policy so this is made clear. Is the collection insured at full value and so forth? What things are covered, what isn't covered? How are borrowed items treated? You don't want that to come as a big surprise when you have items coming in for an exhibit perhaps and then you suddenly discover that you have to spend a lot of money on insurance rider in order to get things covered. But again, it's something that you have to sort out ahead of time. There are museums that do not have insurance at all on their collections. That's pretty risky. If you're self-insured then it means that you at least have a fund of some kind to help cover losses should they occur. It's a question with a lot of possibilities behind it. So it's just one more of those fun things to figure out while you're composing your policy. As always, talk to colleagues, talk to people who have been through this before, look at examples and see what's going to work if you don't have all of these answers at the beginning. Inventories. Here include how you inventory your collection and whether it's annually, every three years, every five years on a rolling basis and so forth. This is again something that is an essential thing to do. Really, so the answer to this really belongs in your policy. It helps show that you are taking care of your collections in the public interest and the part of that is to know where everything is. And there's nothing that gives chills down my spine more when I'm doing a survey or another sort of consultation for a museum and find out that collections are just sort of placed here and there and there's no indication as to where anything is. It's just a frightening situation. So anyway, here's a little story that actually is linked to a cap survey that I did for a small historical society and they knew that they had to complete an inventory because one had never been done before. This was in 1999 for an organization that was founded in 1914. It was a long time for things to get lost or at least mixed up pretty well. They felt overwhelmed at the prospect and have a small staff, a small budget so they decided that they'd do a rolling inventory which is one that you are constantly doing section by section and in this case it worked beautifully. At the time the curator was able to spend every Monday working on inventory since the museum is closed on Mondays. They worked with a textile expert, a bottle expert, a hat expert, an expert in local Native American objects and you name it. Each of them came in at no charge because they had an opportunity to look at this wonderful museum collection behind the scenes and basically in many cases things that nobody had seen in decades. For that museum they were able to get solid dates for the objects and other information on the collection all while doing an inventory. It could be that adding even those little bits of information to the inventory which is basically what is the object, what's the accession number and what's the location. If that slows things down too much just streamline the inventory and stick to the very basics and it should go faster. But if it works to get a little more information at the time that's great. I've used the same method as that museum did with good success and in many cases we were able to invite experts in to see wonderful assortments of objects that they never would have seen otherwise and they were willing to do it free of charge but not everybody who we contacted could afford to do that. Some of them were museum staff people although of course we're all immensely wealthy and so forth. They needed a little compensation for helping us out and that's only fair. But overall we got a lot of expert help without cost and that was terrific. So back to the small historical society and while the inventory was going on they also did rehousing of objects while they were at it replacing all of the old tissue paper with new acid-free stuff. Again that may drag things out a little bit longer than you can afford to deal with but just see how it goes. The more you can do while you're moving the objects around it's certainly better. But it's hard to say that something that works for one museum is going to work for everybody. I pretty much know that isn't the case. So don't forget you will definitely want to include in the inventory section of the policy information for how you will document missing objects if and when something comes up missing and if you don't note anything that's missing tell everybody you know because I've never heard of such a thing in a museum but there may be one out there someplace so wouldn't that be great. There are a number of things such as access to the collections that are important to state in the policy but they do not have to be explained at great length. You just have to indicate that you provide access that there are purposes for it that's fine if it's public access scholars or whatever. So who has access to the collections and under what circumstances are there again different categories? Generally there are. I mean you can't really afford the time to just let everybody come in and poke around in storage. I don't think. Is there a time limit or days of the week that may be getting a little specific honestly to put in a policy but that's okay. And as in most of these areas and parts of the policy it doesn't hurt if you are fairly strict about what you will allow and what you will require and what you will do in the first place. It's a lot easier to allow yourself to be more flexible and beneficent if there are requests that seem to be too limited by what you require. But if you are too liberal in the first place it can be a tremendous headache because then it's just too hard to say no and people think that you are being just too arbitrary about making decisions and it's a great way to make lots of enemies. So be as strict as you can first and if you need to make exceptions as things go along that's okay. An important item in terms of access is who must be present for people having access. This is a real time consumer for staff folks to work with even scholars but anybody who is coming in to see collections you can't just let people come in unsupervised as far as I know. And who do you have who can manage that sort of situation. Our photographs permitted when people are coming in to look at collections. So these are again all important items and should be stated in terms of the governing body's date of approval of the policy. That's very important because otherwise no matter how you file them in your e-computer files or wherever they may reside it's awfully easy to lose track of different versions and even at the beginning there may be a draft and then a version that's approved and then a few years later something else has to be added and if that's not stated on the form itself in the text at the end usually then that can be a real nightmare and it doesn't make anybody look good to have to contend with things like that and try to explain it. So just keep track of that. It's certainly easy enough to do it. If you'd like to have a version number and a date along with that and usually as you go along over the year there'll be a string of version numbers and dates which is helpful to keep those all on there so you'll know where the different versions were made and where you are for the present at the version people are looking at. So all of these helpful items. So now another poll if we may. Does your museum have an improved collection of Spanish management policy in place? Sorry Bruce it looks like this might be wrong. This is the wrong question. Answer this question as suppose it, does your institution have a collections management policy in place? So yes, no or you don't know. Sorry about that guy. All right, well that's okay. So now we're seeing museums that have the policies and what our participants think of them so that's very helpful as well. Folks who are participating in this webinar today a lot of people feel that the policy is not really living up to the need that the museum has that it may need revisions that it's just isn't something that's all that helpful but it's nice to see that there's a couple of dozen there at least with policies that are well written and adequate to protecting the museum collection because that's what we're after to know that we're serving our audience in the right way. Okay, now a couple of questions or cases for you to think about. Let's see, where are we here? All right, a college art museum in Virginia. The college forcibly removed that sounds pretty violent but it may be a little more exciting sounding than it was but do you know what we mean here? It removed four valuable paintings from its collection to finance general operating expenses of the college and I think forcibly just means in regard to what the museum staff had to say about it. There have certainly been a few instances of that or threats of it in recent years. How could a collections management policy have helped necessarily going to provide you with the miracle answers to this because that's not always the case but I think we'll understand that if you have a policy in place at least it can be demonstrated that the museum is taking proper responsibility for these collections that they're important to be held in the public trust and so forth and that any other use of them will be improper at best. That doesn't necessarily mean that you can work miracles if those in power above you have other ideas. Another case, a museum in Washington D.C., museum trustees borrow objects for their own uses. How could a collections management policy have helped there? I think that is a little more straightforward in that the trustees should be the ones to understand the responsibilities of the museums who understand holding the collections in the public trust and that at least possibly when they're faced with their own collections management policy if they have one they would understand permanently lending objects to individuals is just highly improper even if they're board members. That can be a tough one to deal with if you don't have a backup working against something like that but if that policy is there you have the instrument in writing the three, the evil overlords at Christie's very good folks there and we don't need to paint them in a bad way at all for one thing they're extremely knowledgeable folks in terms of art and artifacts of many kinds but in this case a museum deaccession three paintings to which it did not have clear title how could a collections management policy have helped and in that case it's clear that the policy would outline what is necessary in order to consider deaccession of anything from the collection and obviously one of those criteria would be a clear title and that should be noticed right away but another thing that's somewhat comparable to this not quite as serious because the object would still be there but I'm familiar with at least one museum that carried out some extraordinarily long and conservation at least one object in the collection that was not the property of the museum it turned out that the lender didn't really care and was of course rather pleased that they got all that work free but it was a colossal waste of money by the museum and it's awfully good to have that all in writing and make sure everybody in authority is familiar with it okay now do you have a deposit form? Let's see what people have some people don't know and I hope that in that case you haven't been put in a position where you need one just to have it but have the luxury of not being put in that position at all which is really a comfortable place to be if you don't have a deposit form it's helpful to have one I know that some museums use a loan form for that but really those are two different categories because usually a loan form is used for something a loan form is used for documenting an object that you know you would like to have the museum for a while usually for a specific purpose a temporary deposit is for something that just comes in over the transom figuratively speaking but the narration for this picture is what if the folks on the table just wandered away and walked out the front door what would you do with the stuff that they left behind so there's a nice variety of materials there and you can't necessarily judge right off the cuff whether you're going to accept it for the museum use it for exhibition hold on to it to study for the meanwhile or what so don't be caught in that kind of a situation and include that in a policy and then of course come up with a form that you'll have on hand for situations like this the three reasons that you need a temporary deposit form first for your own legal protection once you begin using the forms regularly you'll be protecting this reorganization from having more abandoned objects in the collection both parties sign and date the document and will provide some protection and will come back for his or her item many years down the road did you know that there well this is some kind of old information there are a number of states in the country that do not have abandoned property legislation Rhode Island is on the list of this script but luckily for us in Rhode Island a few months ago we did pass abandoned property legislation for tanks and museums so we're really happy about that if your state does not have such a thing certainly worth pursuing it with the state legislators eventually fellow museum workers in your state will thank you profusely okay the second reason formal documentation what collections manager or registrar doesn't love formal documentation when you use this form it will travel with the object and if the object is accepted into the collection it will remain in the object file if the donor doesn't come back but you decide to add the item to your collection you have the documentation already in place it doesn't solve all your problems but it goes a long way three it demonstrates the museum's commitment to professionalism if I were going to donate to a museum I would be impressed to know that the organization has its basis covered I would know that you were taking your public trust responsibility seriously and that yours is a professional organization and actually one thing that that you may do with different forms is put part of the pertinent part of the collections management policy printed on the back of the form so that if people have questions about that well why do you do that what's the background that will be right there you don't have to throw it in people's faces usually but it's helpful to demonstrate that you're not just pulling the stuff out of the air and at the same time you don't have to give them the entire policy to read and to pick out the interesting part the essential elements of a temporary deposit form this is something created by John Simmons he has written things all over the place his own publication I'm sorry individual publications but also some one or more articles in the Registrar's Handbook published by AAM now in its fifth edition I believe so that's a helpful thing to have as well but he expresses these things very well and recommend anything that he's written generally he has many other tables that he's composed including one a grading strategy for collections or one of everyone's favorites one on the guidelines for developing an intellectual property rights policy that reads like a very handy flow chart and some of these things like that one in particular the intellectual property rights can be a real headache unless you have something that's as well organized that uses this kind of chart to look at so anyway go over these rows in the chart and of course you don't have to memorize them all right now they'll be available later at your convenience which is great okay we're winding down a bit on time so I want to give you a few things to take away today a short step-by-step process that you can follow collections management policy in place at your history organization gather your information collect all the information that you have about your collection how many objects, how many are catalogued do you have a teaching collection or again some other sort of category education objects or whatever they may be called use objects properties according to what you might want to do with them is the collection well cared for do you have a separate line item in your budget for collections care etc. and this may be a time actually to establish some of those kinds of things like collections care if you don't have a line item in the budget it can be awfully tough to get that established I've been one before the old saying well we always did it that way or we never did it that way but even a little bit will help and it just helps to demonstrate that that's something important are you going to put all these things into your collections management policy no you want to get your committee members up to speed you don't want to flood the policy with everything they may not know that you have 10,000 objects but only clear title to 45% of them so let your committee that's working with you know where you stand collecting this information will drive home the point that you need to get working on a temporary deposit form as well your committee members may not understand that many history organizations have one permanent collection and another teaching collection they may not understand the value of having collections care as a separate line item in the budget this is a great opportunity to get a clear picture of your organization okay so I've mentioned task force or committee now in order to put one together if you're an all volunteer organization you would probably assign your collections volunteers or whatever you have the board president and a couple of other board members if your board is unable to come at the time see if you can recruit a member of your organization to help you out or even enthusiastic high school or college student sure we all have interesting stories to tell about how students have done various things for us certainly in the museums I've worked for some really excellent help from some young folks so that's at least a possibility and worth pursuing they might bring a valuable perspective to the table through these days so collection staff, chief administrator or executive director etc depending on your structure a couple of board members if at all possible and in the end advisory capacity along the way an attorney to make sure what you're doing is legally binding, legally acceptable and the way it is spread together breaking out the work determine what skills your committee members have it's a good idea to do this ahead of time so you don't have everybody trying to do the same thing those of you who work with volunteers probably know how to deal with that kind of organization better than I do and some of the skills involved in this are writing, research and ethics and law to get it all organized as much as possible, ask committee members to take a task that will fit into their schedules match their strengths and interests you don't want to ask them strengths and interests step four sort things out on a calendar and think about using technology to ease the process of meeting and revising multiple versions of your documents another possibility is to make a Gantt chart this is actually the name of Henry Gantt who invented the chart for organizing various kinds of activities and if you'd like to do things that way that may well prove very helpful definitely you don't want to just enter into this with this nebulous schedule which pretty well guarantees that you won't know when you can expect to be done try to organize it so you have an end in sight some of the other tools that you might want to use and it just depends entirely on you and your group whether this will be helpful or people will turn and run at the site of something like this and Google documents is one it's actually pretty easy to use but again people aren't used to it and just see whether it's going to work in your instance or not Google sites is another possibility generally these things are actually pretty easy to use but if you have to work too much against the grain then it's okay there are lots of other ways you can email things back and forth even put them on paper haven't forbid so do what works for you but there are a lot of possibilities the sample Gantt chart gives you some idea of how that works and it's primarily for scheduling but it lets people know that you've got this all thought out and have the end in mind and it may help actually get there in the time that you want so finally put your policy to work discuss with your board or executive director about the need to create or revise your collections management policy if everyone agrees to move ahead establish a committee and break the tasks out to subcommittees my own feeling is you don't want to go too far in involving courts of people in this or it may well be something that would work better with fewer people but you don't necessarily want to be a lone ranger either take time to create a temporary deposit form one of the most important items to ensure that you don't have a lot of orphaned artifacts in your organization so we've pretty well wrapped it up here we can take some questions and spend a little bit more time I know it's scheduled for an hour and we're practically there and I'd be happy to accept emails if you have questions that way and I'll look at the I'll look at this website and try to catch questions there as well because I think there are a lot of specific things fairly general ones that will go way beyond what we've covered today and occasionally when I've taught this before it's taken a lot more time I realize there are kind of restrictions on how much we can do at once here but let's see what would be what we can do we do have a couple of questions and I'll try to get to them our producer is kind enough to stay on for 15 minutes after the fact so I know all of you may not be able to do that but we will try to get to your questions there are a couple but before we do that let me go ahead and post our link to the evaluation and so it would be great to hear what you guys thought of the webinar and also really important we'd love to hear what ideas you have for future webinars and this one is particularly special because if you're interested in learning more about the small museum community there's a spot in there to put your email so you can sign up for more information on that and more information on their lists so click on that if you are interested in learning more so Bruce let me just jump right into the questions we had a couple questions about that temporary deposit form could you explain that one more time sure when objects come into the museum for inspection people in my experience anyway often have items that they might want to give to the museum and the general scenario that I have in mind is that a person will bring in something often from an elderly relative or friend or what not would the museum be interested in these items and it's awfully difficult under any circumstances I can think of to make a snap decision on that it's helpful for you in the museum to take the time to look the objects over are they really what the potential donor thinks they are if they're not a problem which can be kind of entertaining in a grim sort of way but in order to give yourself the time to look things over and keep a record of exactly what it is that you have and who it's from you need the temporary deposit form as I said some people use a loan form for that I think it's helpful to have a separate temporary deposit form because the purpose is entirely different you're not necessarily saying that the museum endorses what anything about this object sometimes people will decide well the museum can tell me all about this and I'm just going to take it back and once I find out it's worth a small fortune so there are a lot of different possibilities that you may end up with but if you have that document where the object belongs if you decide not to keep it or if you need further information if you do decide to keep it so it's really important I've been in a situation before where we had dozens of objects with no documentation and it was just incredible and this is over I think 20 years that I was there it was a double waste of time to keep checking these things and inventory trying to find out something about them and making an effort to decide what could we do to get them out of the collection so that's why that is particularly important and I think there are some you can find good examples of that and by all means how serious it is to have that on hand for your own sanity and for the sake of your museum great and a couple of questions some folks were saying that they had temporary custody forms is that the same as a temporary deposit form? absolutely yes and we also had a lot of folks who were interested in seeing a template for a temporary deposit or custody form and we have Leah who says that we found on the AAM registrars listserv do you have another spot where folks could find a template for that? let me see well I know of some possibilities and without leafing through the books right now I'm not absolutely sure but the AAM registration methods publication is a very good one for that kind of information sometimes I know in our regional museum conference in our case New England Museum Association the staff there keep examples of various kinds of documents on hand and so maybe your regional organization would have those but I think either the registration listserv or that publication are pretty good places to start great and if we find something here we'll make sure to post that to the website for this webinar so you guys will see it there let's see we have another question from Ruth and I think this is an issue lots of museums run into she says is a loan made to the museum 60 years ago still a loan if there are no heirs apparent if there's no one attached to the object anymore is it still a loan? oh yes and that's why you fervently pray that the state wherever your museum is has legislation pertaining to abandoned property in museums because then there is a legal process in place specifically for dealing with museum collections and it doesn't necessarily make it a walk in the park to deal with that situation but at least you know if you have well and I'm not just pulling something out of the dark here this is a real example a beautiful little horse drawn wagon that was loaned to a museum in the 1940s and in the 1990s the museum wanted to get it out of the collection because it was still a loan and fortunately with a state abandoned property law in effect the museum just had to follow what the procedures were and basically it meant publishing information about the loan in the newspaper and this is something that doesn't happen quickly but at least it's something a procedure you can follow and end up with a result and more than likely you're not going to end up in court over it either which is another possibility if you don't have legislation so that's the way to deal with that unfortunately old loans are difficult to convert into permanent collection items for the museum if there is no state legislation and we do have one follow-up question that kind of ties this last question in our temporary deposit form question Katie in Colorado is curious can the temporary deposit form act as a deed of gift form is a permanent gift if the donor can't be located or reached the museum once the item can that temporary deposit form be used as a deed of gift well if that's one of the stipulations on the form a lot of them that I've seen have a stipulation that if the objects listed are essentially abandoned in the museum and the depositor cannot be located within a certain time period three months or whatever the items will become the property of the museum to do with as the museum sees fit I have never been in the situation to actually enforce something like that myself so I don't know what the legal implications would be but certainly if you're putting together the form and you would like to include that language as one of the terms and conditions on the form you need to have an attorney look at the entire thing anyway and if that gets approval from your legal advisor then that's good and you can go ahead and use that you always have to keep in mind the possibility that somebody is going to end up making the museum look like a bad guy and I've been in that position before and it's just a miserable thing to deal with but generally it doesn't happen I don't mean to be trying to scare anybody but you should keep it in mind but on the other hand you don't want a bunch of artifacts that are in legal limbo so if you get that on your form that abandoned things will be converted to gifts, property and it's legally acceptable then that's great Okay and we did have a mention earlier about a temporary deposit form, a template if you're using Path Perfect there is a template it sounds like in that program, a temporary custody form another kind of legal question from Sandy that we got earlier was so with a collection management policy is it considered a legal document? Yes and that's why it is essential once it's put together that you have an attorney look it over you may need to find somebody who has not really a specialty but at least a little experience with nonprofits and so forth to look it over because it is something that's adopted by the board that governs how the organization is going to act in various circumstances and do something that will be contravening your bylaws or local or state laws and so with that I'll take care of and with the adoption by the board it's a legal document and that really acts as protection for you and again it's a reason not to load the document down with lots of issues and things like that that you might change on a basis that doesn't require such serious consideration it's a legal document for sure Okay and we have about 10 more minutes and I do have to warn everyone we have a few more questions at 3.15 we may all be kicked out of the room because the webinar officially ends but I'm going to keep posing these questions and let me also just note our next webinar so an hour long webinar you don't need a register you can just show up is actually Tuesday November 19th at 1pm and we're following our online course about outreach and we are just doing one webinar on using social media because it's so important and so if you can't do the full blown course we understand we do have a webinar available November 19th so Bruce we did get a question from and this is a great question she says how does the conservation policy how does it relate to the collections management policy is it a part of the same document are they different how does the collections management policy live with the other policies of an organization well going back to the beginning to some extent there are numerous possibilities here and I'm not trying to avoid the question but as I mentioned some of the items of the collections management policy mention such items as access to the collections, care of collections and so forth and in many policies that I've seen those kinds of subjects are not extensively explored but just expressed in terms of who has responsibility for caring for the collections the policy may say that the museum the organization does have a line item in the budget for conservation and recognizes the ethics of the American Institute for Conservation and a few sentences is fine if that's what is really pertinent to you and you don't have an operation that's particularly complicated and if you deal solely with contract conservators and obviously you don't really need to go too far in expressing how the work will be done because that's more up to them but as long as the basic rules are covered that's what you're after so we had a few questions when we were talking about doing an inventory and Marcia was curious can a photograph of the entire collection be used to expedite the inventory process okay well I suppose so having any kind of an image or individual images is certainly a big help and I know of some organizations that have used videotape just to walk through the museum or even their storage because just about everything was visible and a little narration it's not perfect but it's better than nothing so I would say that if you can get an image of the entire collection it certainly helps until you get some visual images of the objects at some later time and then in the inventory Leanne was curious how much information should be included I think Leah responded and said item number and location should anything else be included in that inventory right item number an identification of what the object is you may want to throw in a couple of words about the object just so that it's more than a chair or a varnished chair because in our collection in one of our museums all of the chairs are varnished so a few extra words saying exactly what style it is that would be a big help but that's really about all you need and it's just to establish where everything is and then just a couple questions about what to include in the policy Leah's curious if you would include something in your policy about the time frame for processing new sessions that might not be a bad idea actually doing the work is a procedure and a process as we mentioned earlier but having a time frame is pretty important because actually for any of these things whether it's for lending and borrowing or for getting a processing done for accessions and deaccessions because it helps ensure that the work will be organized and it will be done in a timely manner not just dropped somewhere in other words you want to eliminate the possibility that something is halfway deaccessioned and all of a sudden you've got no records for it anymore or whatever the instance might be so that's actually a very good point and it's good to do that just be sure that if you are making a time limit for that it's a reasonable one so the staff can actually get the work done and then also in that policy Jennifer was curious would you include information to stipulate how funds from deaccessioning can be used? Oh my yes I almost lost my job in an interesting situation once which involved a board member who wanted to deaccession more things than were actually approved at one point and he had lots of ideas for how the funds could be used none of which aligned with code of ethics from ASLH or AAM or our own institution as it happened so it's important to state those kinds of things in the policy and certainly deaccessioning is a very touchy subject and use of the funds I usually don't lay down absolutes about anything but this is one case where for almost every museum that I know of and their policy funds from deaccessioning can be used only for acquisition of new collections objects and sometimes depending on the institution they will also allow the funds to be used for direct conservation treatment for collections and that's it. I'm just going to ask one more question of you Bruce Peter had a follow-up question about the inventory list he's curious would it also be a good idea to include some information about the condition of the object as well You can do that and I guess perhaps what Peter has in mind is objects that are maybe not in the best condition you know you can add information that's important to your situation and the reason I suggested an inventory using a minimum number of information fields is to enable you to get through it in the least amount of time it may be as with the example of the small historical society to do some rehousing of objects if you can fit that in to have the experts help identify a little bit more about the objects as you're looking at them so those kinds of things are certainly fine if it works out in your situation and you don't end up with a project with no end in sight so by all means tailor it to what works for you Great well thank you so much Bruce and thank you to Maggie we're out of time today a recording of this webinar will be in the online community available to us and of course feel free to continue the conversation on our discussion board on the online community a great place to get answers Bruce you've even weighed in but thank you Bruce and thank you to all of our folks who signed in today Thanks to everybody who made this possible and it was a pleasure to take part in it and I will do my best to answer questions or it's either by email or on the website