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 ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).