At its meeting in Paris yesterday (5 December) the ICOM Advisory Committee - representing each of its more than 150 national and international committees and affiliated organisations - agreed to submit the following updated version of the 1974 international definition of a museum to ICOM's next General Assembly of representatives of ICOM's 16,000+ members, to be held in Barcelona, Spain, on 6 July 2001: "A museum is a non-profit making permanent institution in the service of society and its development, and open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for the purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment. "(a) The above definition of a museum shall be applied without any limitation arising from the nature of the governing body, the territorial character, the functional nature or the orientation of the collections of the institution concerned. "(b) In addition to institutions designated as "museums" the following qualify as museums for the purposes of this definition: "(i) natural, archaeological and ethnographic monuments and sites and historical monuments and sites of a museum nature that acquire, conserve and communicate material evidence of people and their environment; (ii) institutions holding collections of and displaying live specimens of plants and animals, such as botanical and zoological gardens, aquaria and vivaria; (iii) science centres and planetaria; (iv) non-profit art exhibition galleries; (v) non-profit institutions or organizations undertaking conservation, research, education, training, documentation or other activities relating to museums and museology; (vi) cultural centres that facilitate the preservation, continuation and management of tangible or intangible (living heritage) resources." ------------- This definition is of great importance beyond the membership of ICOM itself since it is very widely used by other official bodies at the national and international level. Also, the proposal for a new top level Internet domain of .museum, recently agreed by the official international domain-naming body, ICANN, explicitly links .museum to the ICOM definition of a museum. Patrick Boylan ========================================================= 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).