[NHCOLL-L:636] archival storage policy

[HUMPHREY ROSANNE L]

Does anyone out there have a written policy on archival storage? I am
mainly interested in hearing from university museums, especially those
that do not have any archive personnel on staff. Right now we have no
formal (or informal for that matter) policy. It is up to each individual
research section to decide what to keep and how to keep it. Most of us
have little or no training in this area, and I would like to find some
guidelines that will help us in formulating a museum-wide policy. Some of
the questions we will be discussing are as follows.

1. When someone retires, and is ready to pass their material on to the 
museum, what material should be kept? (field notes, research materials,
original artwork or photographs, correspondence, material relating to
professional societies, class notes, student papers,
meeting minutes, miscellaneous "office stuff," etc.)

2. Should material of all retired museum faculty be kept? What about
research associates?

3. Who should keep the material, the research collection to which the
faculty person is associated? a museum-wide archive? a university archive?
This is an especially important question for museums that have no personnel
to manage the material. 

4. What do you do if you (the museum, or the research section) have little
or no space to house everything? And what if the university archive
will not take the material? Each retiring curator or administrator
can leave behind a whole office full of material.

Thank you,

Rosanne Humphrey
Collection Manager, Zoology Section
University of Colorado Museum
Campus Box 315
Boulder, CO 80309-0315
humphrey at spot.colorado.edu
tel: (303) 492-0276