The Collections Committee of the National Museum of American History is
composed of about ten persons who are representative of various areas of the
museum.  I realize as I write this that I'm very fuzzy on details, so I'm not
positive about the number of persons.  The members are appointed by
management (usually the chief curator, I believe), not by either the museum's
advisory board or the Smithsonian Board of Regents, who seldom get involved
in this level of administration.  The membership rotates periodically, and
usually includes a combination of curators, collection managers or
specialists, the registrar, etc.  I don't know of any "job description" for
committee members.  Most people have a pretty good idea of how the committee
operates and know what to do if they get appointed to the committee.  The
committee meets twice a month, and any proposal must be submitted several
days in advance so there's time to get any clarification necessary before the
committee discusses it.  I think emergency meetings can be convened when
necessary, but the scheduled meetings usually prove adequate and timely.

The committee considers some but not all new acquisitions by gift, all
acquisitions by purchase, some deaccessions, and some loans.  Gift
acquisitions and loans must be considered by the committee if they exceed
certain numerical, volume, or value thresholds--although I've forgotten
exactly what those thresholds are.  I'm fairly sure that the value of objects
requiring collections committee decisions is $5000 and up.  Gift acquisitions
and outgoing loans which fall below the numerical, size, or value thresholds
do not require committee approval.  All deaccessions of high-level accessions
require committee approval, and it's a fairly detailed and careful process.
Almost forgot--all gift offers from museum staff must be approved by the
committee, regardless of quantity, size, or value.  Deaccessions of
lower-level items (which we call nonaccessions) require registrarial approval
but not collections committee action.  Collections committee decisions then
require approval by the director, but I am not aware of any instance in which
the director has ever disagreed with the committee's recommendation.

Acquisition proposals to the committee require detailed supporting
information, such as a description of the material and a justification of
research or exhibit potential and appropriateness, relationship to existing
collections, shipping cost estimates, collection processing requirements,
etc.  My most recent experience with the committee required two
proposals--one for approval to view the collection (a photographer's prints,
negative archive, and business archive), resulting in registrarial funds to
pay for my travel, followed by another proposal which reported my findings
and contained more specific information.  (After approval was obtained, the
registrar's office made all the arrangements for the shipment.)  I'm
currently negotiating with several photographers for gifts of about a dozen
prints each--which will not require committee approval, since the quantities
are small and the total value of each gift is under $5000.

If any of my colleagues read this post, they can correct any errors in my
description of the procedures, or if I find mistakes, I'll report back.

Incidentally, I'm still curious as to whether any other institutions use the
term "nonaccession" to denote lower-level accessions, in which there are less
stringent requirements for accountability, etc., than with higher-value,
full-fledged "accessions."  In my unit, the Archives Center, we typically use
the nonaccession procedure because most collections contain many thousands of
papers, photographs, and documents.  This permits us to register collections
without having to list each item individually.  It would be virtually
impossible to list the thousands of items in the large photographer's archive
I mentioned above, for example, just to get them entered in the registrar's
files for a full "accession."  The nonaccession guidelines permit me to
estimate the quantity or use volume to describe the collection.  I may in
time request an accession number to "promote" selected photographs in this
collection to the higher level.  With the other two small collections of
photographs previously mentioned, I'll use the higher-level accession
procedure because it's easy to list all the photographs on the accession
memorandum--but also because they're documentary photographs which also
function as works of art, and I think they warrant the additional implicit
protection.

The preceding paragraph represents more than you wanted to know, but I
thought I would piggyback that issue onto my answer in another attempt to
solicit comment on "bi-level" accessioning procedures.

David Haberstich

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