The titles curator, collection manager, and so forth have never been
used with any real consistency in museums.  Technically, curator means
to take care of something, yet we have such titles floating around as
"curator of community ecology."  In the business world, a collection
manager collects bad debts (which explains some rather odd invitations
to seminars I get, due to my title).  I have addressed these issues
as they relate to natural history museums in the following paper:

Simmons, John E.
1993.  Natural history collections management in North America.
Journal of Biological Curation 1(3/4):1-17.

Jour. Biol. Curation is the former journal of the present Biology
Curator's Group (UK).  If anyone has trouble finding this article
and needs a copy, please let me know.

John
Natural History Museum, University of Kansas
[log in to unmask]