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Department of the Interior

Departmental Manual

Effective Date: 3/19/97

Series: Property Management

Part 411: Managing Museum Property

Chapter 1: Policy and Responsibilities for Managing Museum Property

Originating Office: Office of Acquisition and Property Management

411 DM 1

1.1 How to Identify Your Museum Property.

A. What is museum property? Museum property is personal property acquired according to some rational scheme and preserved, studied, or interpreted for public benefit. You may have museum property even though you have no museums. Museum property includes objects selected to represent archeology, art, ethnography, history, documents, botany, zoology, paleontology, geology, and environmental samples. Definitions of terms related to managing museum property are in Appendix 1 of this chapter. Museum property may be distinguished from other kinds of property by one or more of the following characteristics.

B. What does museum property not include? Non-museum property may share some characteristics of museum property. Decisions on whether materials that look the same are museum property or other property depend on the function of the property, long-term preservation goals, and the bureau mission. Museum property does not include official records or working collections. (Refer to definitions in Appendix 1.)

C. How does one manage museum property? You must manage bureau museum property using the policies and standards in this Part. Museum property may be housed in bureau museums and offices, and in other Federal or non-Federal facilities.

1.2 The Department's Policy for Managing Museum Property.

A. We consistently use professional standards to identify, preserve, protect, and document museum property for present and future uses such as managing, interpreting, and researching our resources.

B. We preserve information associated with museum property to make it more useful for supporting the missions of the Department's bureaus and offices.

C. We manage museum property to comply with laws and other mandates.

D. We provide guidance for meeting Departmentwide museum property standards.

1.3 Managers' Responsibilities for Museum Property.

A. What are the responsibilities of the Assistant Secretary - Policy, Management and Budget? The Assistant Secretary - Policy, Management and Budget oversees how the Department's museum property is managed.

B. What are the responsibilities of the Director, Office of Acquisition and Property Management? The Director, Office of Acquisition and Property Management, develops Departmentwide policy on museum property. The Director

(1) Issues and maintains the Departmental Manual, 411 DM, Managing Museum Property, the Interior Museum Property Handbook, and directives;

(2) Serves as the Departmental liaison with other agencies;

(3) Provides Departmental oversight, technical assistance, and training to bureaus and offices in preserving, protecting, accessioning, cataloging, lending, deaccessioning, using, controlling, and inventorying museum property;

(4) Coordinates, consolidates, and analyzes museum property reports from the bureaus and offices;

(5) Recommends actions for improving the museum property program in bureaus and offices; and

(6) Takes a leadership role in resolving museum property issues in any bureau or office when any proposed action or substantive change could adversely impact museum property.

C. What are the responsibilities of all Assistant Secretaries? All Assistant Secretaries must provide program and budget support to carry out Departmental requirements we identify in this Part.

D. What are the responsibilities of Heads of Bureaus and Offices? Heads of bureaus and offices must fulfill the following responsibilities.

(1) Carry out Departmental policy and procedures outlined in 411 DM and other directives, regulations, issuances, or instructions;

(2) Establish and fund a viable and responsible museum property program that is consistent with 411 DM and applicable statutes and regulations;

(3) Designate personnel who know the methods and techniques for managing museum property and provide training necessary to implement 411 DM;

(4) Provide bureauwide policy guidance, program direction, and funding; and

(5) Establish Museum Property Committees or equivalent groups, if appropriate, to make sure interested parties have an opportunity to advise on managing museum property.

APPENDIX 1

DEFINITIONS OF TERMS RELATED TO

MANAGING MUSEUM PROPERTY

The terms listed below relate to managing museum property and are used in 411 DM.

A. "Accessioning" is the process by which the Department of the Interior formally accepts and establishes permanently legal title (ownership) and/or custody for a museum object or group of museum objects. A single accession transaction occurs when one or more objects are acquired in the same manner from one source at one time for the museum property collection.

B. "Administrative offices" is a generic phrase that includes offices, lobbies, meeting rooms, hallways, and any other non-dedicated space that may house museum property. Department of the Interior Standards for managing museum property in administrative offices are in 411 DM 3.3.

C. "Appraisal" is: 1) the practice of an expert assigning a monetary value to museum property for a specific management purpose (e.g., to designate controlled museum property, or in preparation for an exchange, loan, or deaccession). (2) the process by which you, as a museum property manager, evaluate non-official records against the Scope of Collection Statement and review the documents for informational, artifactual, evidential, associational, and administrative value; (3) the process by which the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) determines the value and thus the final disposition of Federal records, making them either temporary or permanent (36 CFR 1220);

D. "Associated Records" are all documentation generated by the activity of collecting and analyzing artifacts, specimens, or other resources that are or subsequently may be designated as museum property. Examples include site forms, field notes, drawings, maps, photographs, slides, negatives, films, video and audio cassette tapes, oral histories, artifact inventories, laboratory reports, computer cards and tapes, computer disks and diskettes, printouts of computerized data, manuscripts, and reports. Associated records are "associated" with objects collected during such activities. Also, refer to the definition in 36 CFR 79. These records are needed to effectively manage museum property collections and should be maintained as part of those collections.

E. "Authorized Parties" are persons representing one or more entities, either within or outside the Federal Government, who have authority to act on behalf of their institutions.

F. "Bureau," for the purposes of this 411 DM, includes the Secretariat, the Secretarial Offices, and the Bureaus, as defined in 101 DM, Organization Management, Section 2.4, Organizational Nomenclature.

G. "Cataloging" is the action of assigning and applying a unique identifying catalog number to an object or group of objects and completing descriptive documentation.

H. "Controlled property" is an individual object or a cataloged "lot" of objects that is especially sensitive; has high intrinsic or scientific value; is especially vulnerable to theft, loss, or damage; is valued at or above a threshold value established by each bureau; or is a museum firearm. The catalog record must indicate that it is controlled museum property.

I. "Curatorial staff" includes all persons in each bureau who have direct responsibility for managing museum property. This may include museum curators, museum specialists, and museum technicians, or archeologists, archivists, historians, interpreters, property management specialists, rangers, resource management specialists, or others who manage museum property as a collateral duty.

J. "Deaccessioning" is the formal procedure by which objects are permanently removed from the museum property system through exchanges, transfers, and losses.

K. "Dedicated storage space" is space separated from all other uses, including office space, research and other work areas, and space for storing materials other than museum property. It is free of utilities and other functions that require routine access by individuals who are not curatorial staff.

L. "Designated authority" is a person(s) identified by a bureau who is responsible for managing museum property. Different individuals may be designated authorities for specific roles and functions for managing museum property. The designated authority must have training appropriate to the size, nature, and complexity of the collection being managed and to her/his management responsibility. Responsibilities include making accessioning and deaccessioning decisions based on a comprehensive knowledge of the methods and techniques for preserving, protecting, and documenting museum property.

M. "Discipline classification type" is a category of museum property that organizes collections into separate disciplines to provide a systematic filing scheme for retrieving data. Discipline classification types used in the Department of the Interior are archeology, art, botany, documents, environmental samples, ethnography (e.g., Native American), geology, history, paleontology, and zoology.

N. "Discipline specialist" is a person with specialized knowledge of an academic discipline that corresponds to a type of museum property. Examples include an archeologist, archivist, art historian, botanist, ethnographer, geologist, historian, paleontologist, and zoologist. Each of these may be further divided into specialists of more narrowly-defined disciplines.

O. "Document Collections" are a type of museum property that includes audio-visual, electronic, and text documents.

P. "Indian lands" has the same meaning as in section -.3 (e) of uniform regulations 43 CFR Part 7, 36 CFR Part 296, 18 CFR Part 1312, and 32 CFR Part 229. The Archaeological Resources Protection Act definition states that "Indian lands means lands of Indian tribes, or Indian individuals, which are either held in trust by the United States or subject to a restriction against alienation imposed by the United States, except for subsurface interests not owned or controlled by an Indian tribe or Indian individual." Consult appropriate statutes and regulations for definitions that apply to bureau-specific collections.

Q. "Loans" are objects in the temporary custody of the bureau or other parties, on either a short-term or long-term basis. They may be incoming loans or outgoing loans. They further the bureau's goals of preserving, interpreting, and researching cultural and natural resources. They involve temporary legal responsibility and custody changes but not a change in ownership or title, and are covered by a loan agreement, cooperative agreement, or similar instrument. Authorized parties of both the borrower and the lender must sign loan agreements. For the purpose of inventory, short-term incoming loans are treated like controlled property.

R. "Museum Object," or "object" is a generic term for an item of museum property. It includes art and history objects, archeological artifacts, document collections, and natural history specimens.

S. "Museum Property Committee" is a small, diverse group that advises on managing museum property. Topics typically include Scope of Collection Statements, accessions, deaccessions, loans, and required data appropriate to specific disciplines represented in the museum property collections. Museum Property Committees should make sure voices representing various disciplines contribute to decisions about managing museum property.

T. "Museum Records" are official records that curatorial staff create to manage museum property (e.g., accession, catalog, lend, and inventory records). These records must be appraised through agency record schedule procedures, and, as necessary, certified to the Archivist of the United States that they are needed for current business.

U. "Official records" are defined by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in 44 U.S.C 3301 as follows: "...'Records' includes all books, papers, maps, photographs, machine readable materials, or other documentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by any agency of the United States Government under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency or its legitimate successor as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations or other activities of the Government or because of the informational value of data in them. Library and museum material made or acquired and preserved solely for reference or exhibition purposes, extra copies of documents preserved only for convenience of reference, and stocks of publications and of processed documents are not included."

V. "Preventive Conservation" uses non-interventive actions(s) to prevent damage to and minimize deterioration of objects and associated data. Such actions include monitoring and controlling environmental agents (e.g., light, relative humidity, temperature, air pollution, and pests); practicing proper handling, storage, exhibit, and packing and shipping techniques; implementing an ongoing housekeeping program in all space housing museum property; and preparing and carrying out emergency management plans for museum property.

W. "Reviewing Official" is the person with programmatic responsibility for managing museum property at a bureau unit.

X. "Scope of Collection Statement" (SOCS) is the basic museum property planning document required for all Department of the Interior bureaus. Each unit having or expecting to have museum property must have an approved SOCS. The SOCS guides a unit in acquiring museum objects that contribute directly to its mission, as well as those objects that the bureau is legally mandated to preserve. For units with small museum property collections, you may achieve an approved SOCS through an addendum to a bureau SOCS.

Y. "Standards" are authoritative principles or rules that imply a model or pattern for guidance. By comparing the current status with standards, the quality of conditions and practices may be determined. Department of the Interior standards for managing museum property are described in 411 DM 3.

Z. "Unit" is a bureau organizational entity (e.g., administrative unit, office, park, center, laboratory, repository, site, refuge, or accountability area).

AA. "Value" refers to the significance of a museum object because of its associations, its monetary replacement cost, or its potential use for providing information or evidence.

BB. "Working and Reference Collections" are organic or inorganic specimens or objects maintained by programs within bureaus for the purpose of education, identification, or ongoing research. They are not intended for permanent long-term preservation, although some specimens may subsequently be designated museum property. Working and reference collections may or may not be maintained to the standards of museum property and may be consumed or disposed of during the analysis process according to bureau policy. Working and reference collections facilitate the work of scientists who collect and process large quantities of samples or specimens for analysis and other purposes. Such collections are organized and maintained through internal bureau policies.

APPENDIX 2

LAWS AND REGULATIONS RELATED TO MANAGING MUSEUM PROPERTY

( 1) Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. 552;

( 2) Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities, June 8, 1906 (16 U.S.C. 431-433);

( 3) Reservoir Salvage Act of 1960, as amended (16 U.S.C. 469-469c);

( 4) Archeological and Historic Preservation Act of 1974 (16 U.S.C. 469-469c);

( 5) Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, as amended (16 U.S.C. 470aa-mm), (ARPA);

( 6) National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended (16 U.S.C. 470-470t, sec. 110);

( 7) Bald Eagle Protection Act of 1940 (16 U.S.C. 668-668d);

( 8) Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 (16 U.S.C. 703-711);

( 9) Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 (16 U.S.C. 1361-1407);

(10) Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended (16 U.S.C. 1531-1543);

(11) Lacey Act of 1900 (18 U.S.C. 43-44);

(12) Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (25 U.S.C. 3001-3013);

(13) Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, as amended (40 U.S.C. 483 (b));

(14) American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 (42 U.S.C. 1996);

(15) Preservation, Arrangement, Duplication, Exhibition of Records (44 U.S.C. 2109);

(16) Federal Records Act of 1950, as amended ("Records Management by Federal Agencies" [44 U.S.C. 3101 et seq.]);

(17) "Disposal of Records," (44 U.S.C. 3301 et seq.);

(18) "Curation of Federally-Owned and Administered Archeological Collections," 36 CFR 79;

(19) "Federal Records; General," 36 CFR 1220;

(20) "Disposition of Federal Records," 36 CFR 1228;

(21) Federal Property Management Regulations (FPMR), 41 CFR 101;

(22) "Preservation of American Antiquities," 43 CFR 3;

(23) "Protection of Archaeological Resources," 43 CFR 7;

(24) Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Regulations, 43 CFR 10;

(25) Information Resources Management, 380 Departmental Manual;

(26) Interior Property Management Directives, 410 Departmental Manual ;

(27) 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (implemented in the United States by P.L. 97-446 in 1983, [19 U.S.C. 2601]);

(28) 1983 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES);

(29) Additional laws, regulations, and conventions specific to individual bureaus; and

(30) State laws that may apply.

3/19/97 #3141

Replaces 1/8/93 #2967

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