His vision for the National Museum was that it should include a comprehensive collection of all the natural resources of the United States. Charles Wilkes would be kept upstairs in the Patent Office building.
ART COLLECTIONS
A few years later, in July 1906, the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia decided that the Smithsonian did include "a National Gallery of Art." Johnson approved the use of the building as a Smithsonian Gallery of Arts, Crafts and Design.
HISTORY AND CULTURE COLLECTIONS
In 1979, when the Museum of African Art became part of the Smithsonian, its collections included about 8,000 works of art. In FY1995, the Smithsonian's National African American Museum Project became part of the museum's administrative structure and was renamed the Center for African American History and Culture.
SCIENCE COLLECTIONS
Laboratory of the Agricultural Research Service (US Department of Agriculture) and the Department of Entomology at NMNH. After the completion of a separate building for the latter, the Museum of Natural History took over the entire former USNM facility.
ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES
The Archives Division collects and maintains official records of the Smithsonian and papers of affiliated individuals and organizations. The Institutional History Division is responsible for research, public programs, publications, and exhibits about Smithsonian history. AAA's collections are the world's largest source of primary materials documenting the history of the visual arts in America from the 18th century to the present.
The first of these, the Dibner Library of the History of Science, now housed at NMAH, began with a 1975 gift of 10,000 rare science books and. The first leader of the newly created position of Director of SIL, Russell Shank reported directly to the Secretary.
COLLECTIONS GUIDANCE
In its early years, the commission operated almost as a de facto bureau of the Smithsonian. 59 Powell also served as director of the Smithsonian's Bureau of Ethnology from 1880 until his death in 1902. These reviews emphasized research as the priority of USNM and considered the role of government funding in the future of the Smithsonian.
On the advice of the president of the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian appointed a committee to. September 1993 The Board of Regents established the Commission on the Future of the Smithsonian Institution, charging it.
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, Held January 18, 1946. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, Showing the Operations, Expenditures, and Condition of the Institution for the Year 1875. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, January 12, 1946.
Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, January 18, 1946. An act to establish the National Museum of the American Indian within the Smithsonian Institution, and for other purposes.
APPENDIX B
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
At the National Museum of American History (NMAH), the National Air and Space Museum (NASM), and the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), umbrella entities such as the Department of Collections Management or the Department of Collections Management Services report to curatorial department heads. . The location of the conservation function appears to be related to the size of the collection unit and the type of collection. The Office of the General Counsel reviews and makes recommendations on the legal aspects of collection management issues, such as dispositions and bequests.
As the early years of the National Museum of the Smithsonian were divided into different units and other units were added to the Smithsonian, collection management functions were transferred to the units that held collections. In the past, the curators made the decisions about the collections, and the specialists took care of the collection management.
APPENDIX C
LIST OF MUSEUMS AND ORGANIZATIONS
Royal Museum, Museum of Scotland in Granton Center (Edinburgh, Škotska) Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, Ontario, Kanada)*.
APPENDIX D
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Unusual Obstacles: Natural history museums and custodians of living collections face incomprehensible dilemmas, different from those of other institutions. Re: Source [formerly Museums and Galleries Commission, and since 2004 Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, www.mla.gov.uk]. Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, January 17, 1947.
Collections and Attractions: From Where Collections in the "Age of Experience". In Clio in museum garb: The National Museum of American History, the Science Museum and the History of Technology.
APPENDIX E
AN INTERAGENCY
NATURAL HISTORY FACILITY
Partners include the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII)1; National Institutes of Health; Agricultural Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture (ARS/USDA); Patuxent Wildlife Research Center of the US Geological Survey (USGS) of the USA. At the Smithsonian, this option is currently being followed at NMNH by planned renovations of NHB and the construction of the Pod 5 facility at MSC for alcohol collections. In fact, interviewees from the Smithsonian Office of Facilities Engineering and Operations (OFEO) suggested that the square foot costs of building a new state-of-the-art store and.
For invertebrate zoology, half of the curators are moving to Pod 5 and the other half are. This option envisions a modern, custom-built facility that provides integrated research and storage space for NMNH and other federal agencies, and possibly other Smithsonian natural history research units (for example, STRI).
APPENDIX F
ACQUISITION AND DISPOSAL
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
More recently, in 1999, the museum established a Collections 21 task force whose mandate was to “reexamine and define the purpose, nature, and scope of the artifacts we will need to achieve our mission in the next century (Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village 1999) .” This task force operated in parallel with two others that examined “the nature and mix of our programming experiences” at the museum and Greenfield Village, respectively (ibid.). The Collections 21 Working Group also identified a guiding principle of collections – “The artefacts we hold must tell a story, and the story we tell is a story of change over time” – in the light of which prudent purchases should be made. For example, they should "reflect a change in the way America viewed, understood, or interacted with the world" and "include a strong story about the creator, user, or marketer." The task force listed the target audience in order of priority, noting that the primary audience to consider when collecting items is.
Mechanization”; "appropriate use of technology"; and "Biotechnology and Conventional Genetic Isolation." The narrative states that "these themes and subjects will build on what is arguably the best machine collection in the United States. Each curatorial department was to review all objects in its collections and assign the objects to one of four categories: (1) core; ( 2) education (for practical use); (3) fellowship (primarily for loan); and (4) disposal.3 The last category had to correspond to at least 10 percent of a department's remaining collections4; some departments placed up to 20 percent of their collections in this category.
APPENDIX G
ADDITIONAL STATISTICAL MATERIAL
FTEs Costs FTE Days Costs FTE Days Costs Collection Unit Loan Posts a reported estimate per loan per loan per topic per subject. For these calculations, loans reported by C-HNDM and NZP are not included, as these entities have not reported any work input. For these calculations, loans reported by NZP are not included, as NZP has not reported any work effort.
Cost of FTEs FTE days Cost FTE days Cost Collecting units Loans Items reported rating for loan rating for rating of item. Cost of FTEs for FTE days Cost of FTE days of loan cost Reported rating voice for credit rating for voice rating.
APPENDIX H
AN ACTIVITY-BASED MODEL FOR
ESTIMATING THE LABOR IMPLICATIONS OF ALTERNATIVE COLLECTIONS
MANAGEMENT SCENARIOS IN SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS
With the model, it examined the staffing requirements for alternative scenarios of collection management activities and performance measures. For unquantified activities, the OP&A survey team used the number of FTEs reported for these collection management activities. In the future, directors should ideally seek quantitative performance measures for all collection management tasks.).
The sixth column contains a new target level as a percentage of current performance for each collection management activity. The OP&A research team developed and used this model to understand the implications of changing goals for Smithsonian collections management at a very general level.
Deaccession 1,000,000 items in 2,000 transactions, including basic cataloguing of 100,000 items prior to deaccessioning (so the unit and
With this goal in mind, the OP&A research team used the model to ask a number of “what if?” questions. Below are the staffing implications for three target scenarios.4 Results are given in FTE person-years required to achieve the scenario objectives; assuming no technological changes occur in the relationship between labor and output, these will be the same whether the work is accomplished within 1 year, 5 years, or 20 years. Note that these are not estimates of the additional staff required for basic collection management tasks; Actual staffing needs depend on the time period used to perform the work.
Complete basic cataloging for 1,000,000 electronic records and enhanced cataloging for 500,000 electronic records.5 enhanced cataloging for 500,000 electronic records.5.
Process 100 loans to affiliate museums and 3,000 loans to other users (perhaps including enhancement or conservation loans)
Whatever the actual objectives, OP&A's research team does not believe it is possible to achieve desirable improvements in collections management while maintaining a focus on using federal employees. As a final caveat, it should be noted that the OP&A model most likely projects the staffing of the NMNH collections better than that of other collecting units with a significantly different balance of research, exhibitions, and public programs—for example, those that devote a greater share to some of the staff time at exhibitions, or a smaller part of the staff time. 6 The research team used FY 2002 performance because FY 2002 was the first and most recent year for which NCP had published electronic collections management data.
Since the OP&A survey collected FY2000 data, the study team used data from two different years as a proxy for the relationship between collections management tasks and applied work. The specific collection management objectives used in the scenario were: to reduce purchase transactions from 1,618 to 1,500; increase in departure transactions from 283 to 500;.
