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Re: Museums and documents



Hi Lee,

Yours is a very thought-provoking post.  Obviously, museum which have
museum archives are the ones that tend to acknowledge the importance of
their records. Furthermore, most museums (although art museums have had a
somewhat dicey history of this) understand the importance of provenance
records for their artifacts. However, it seems to me that many museums have
not treated their paper records as well as their artifacts, and that
without an archives proper, traditional curators tend to treat records as
lesser and therefore badly.   AAM accreditation places a high value on
documentation and I know that a musuem archives is a plus when
underaccreditation review - but it does not appear to be required, or even
recommended. I can find no real guidelines or ethics which address the
issues directly. Perhaps the SAA Museum Archives section needs to work with
AAAM on this - I'm section chair-elect and can bring this up in August. I
belive AAM is open to us - they may co-sponsoring the 2nd edition of the
Museum Archives Manual we're working on now.


At the PM, we have collections managers rather than curators (our curators
are faculty in the dept. of anthro and as such are more figureheads than
active curators for the most part), and the collections managers here have
a very good  understanding of the difference between documents and
artifacts, and are open to my education. As well, our conservator has
worked with me to help folks understand the physical differences. I suspect
that curators are *not* taught about the differences,although I do
encourage the folks here at the museum certificate program at HU Extension
School to mention the differences and in my tours I always underline the
importance of having a professional archivist at a museum or at least
adhering to archival standards. We do collect beyond our own archives in
order to further document our collections, but try not to go too far into
the real of special collections.

Sarah


At 09:00 AM 3/3/00 -0600, you wrote:
Many museum curators seem not to understand the difference between documents
and artifacts, nor the difference between archival and curatorial practice.
Apart from preserving its own archives, is there a general feeling about the
propriety of a museum collecting papers and records, as well as museum
artifacts? Does the museum world have any ethical guidelines or standards
about documents versus artifacts? As an archivist, I try very hard not to
get into the museum business. Are museum curators likewise taught not to
dabble in documents?

Lee

==--00--==

Leon C. Miller, Manuscripts Librarian
Special Collections, Jones Hall, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library
Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118
Ph: 504-865-5685, Fx: 504-865-5761
Leon.Miller@tulane.edu
http://www.tulane.edu/~lmiller/SpecCollHomepage.html

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Sarah R. Demb, M.L.I.S. | Museum Archivist
Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, Harvard University
11 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 496-2994 | (617) 495-7535 fax
sdemb@fas.harvard.edu | http://www.peabody.harvard.edu/archives/

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Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
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Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>