As David Harvey mentioned, the Conservation Assessment Program could be an excellent way to determine the long-term care costs for a collection. In fact, the CAP assessment is often a museum’s first step toward major improvements in collections care, policies and procedure.  The CAP application will be made available on Heritage Preservation’s website, www.heritagepreservation.org on September 4, 2009.  The application deadline is December 1, 2009.  I would encourage all museums who are interested in the program to submit their applications as soon after the release date as possible, since acceptance is now determined on a rolling basis.  Assessments of the participating institutions may begin as early as January 1, 2010.

I also wanted to note something about the question of endowments being used specifically to cover the care, conservation and restoration of museum collections.  Although it is an excellent idea to provide essential stable funding for the care of collections, the Heritage Health Index (www.heritagehealthindex.org), a survey published on the state of U.S. collections in 2005, found that only 17% of museums and historical societies used the income from their endowments to fund conservation/preservation.  Most of the museums in the country are more likely to turn to other sources for funding for preservation, including their regular institutional budgets, as well as state, local and federal grants.  A list of federal grants for collections care can be found at IMLS.gov.  

=========================================================
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).