[NHCOLL-L:152] Curators, collection managers and registrars -Reply

[Sally Shelton]

Many natural history museums do not in fact have a tradition of delegating
certain tasks to a registrar, assuming that a curator or head of a
department can do this as well. That is not necessarily true, and is
becoming less and less true every year as issues become more legally and
ethically complex. Here's (briefly) how we make the distinctions:

At NMNH-Smithsonian, a curator is a scientific professional, usually with a
discipline-specific Ph.D, subject specialist with primary responsibility for
adding to the scholarly value of collections and other holdings through
research, publication and teaching. A collections manager is also a
professional, usually with significant graduate work, with primary
responsibility for the physical care, documentation, and oversight of
collections transactions (supervising and facilitating loans, exchanges,
accessions, deaccession, etc.) based on the recommendations of the curators.
Our collections managers have a level of responsibility for managing routine
collections use requests, supervising collections technicians, and in
general managing the day-to-day activities of keeping the collections safe,
accessible and documented.

Our registrar is responsible for the legal end of things, and this is where
a registrar is a treasure. Here, the registrar manages the institution-wide
records that have to be compiled from all departments so that we can meet
our annual requirements for collections statistics, respond to audits by the
SI Inspector General, and provide in-depth records for collections users.
Donations, gifts and other accessions receive unique accessions numbers from
the registrar, who keeps all original accession documentation on
file--vitally important for tax purposes. The registrar consolidates all
these particular functions that would otherwise be spread out over multiple
collections and difficult to access. She also coordinates with me on making
sure that we possess material legally and maintains files of our scientific
collecting permits. 

Having a registrar ensures that our legal needs are met fully and saves a
great deal of trouble for the individual departments. The registrar does not
interfere with the flow of scientific information and activity--she just
ensures that everything is centrally documented as well so that we can
operate legally, fairly and ethically. We are an instrumentality of the
Federal government, and that does impose a high levrel of accountability
that we would not be able to achieve without this coordinating function. It
is different in many ways from the role of registrars in many art and
history museums. 

Sincerely,
Sally Shelton
Collections Officer
National Museum of Natural History
Smithsonian Institution


>>> "Fabio Penati" <museo.morbegno at provincia.so.it> Thursday, 13 May 1999
>>>
Dear Colleagues,

yesterday I went to a workshop about "Registrar", held in Milan, where this
profession, new for Italian Museums, has been presented. I asked to the
speakers (all coming from artistic museums!!!!) to explain the differences
among registrar's, curator's and collection manager's missions in a museum
of natural history, but they were not able.
So, if someone of you has enough time to answer to this question, it would
be surely very useful for all Italian curators working in the museums of
natural history. In fact, we wish to understand how "registrar" can work
with us and what she/he can do in Italian istitutions.
Thank you very much.

Fabio Penati
Curator
Museo Civico di Storia Naturale
Via Cortivacci, 2
23017 Morbegno (SO), Italy
tel. +39 0342 612451, fax +39 0342 615528
e-mail: museo.morbegno at provincia.so.it