The Children's Museum sort of accessions its educational resource
collection.  We treat our ed resource objects the same way we do our
permanent collection to a point: each object gets its own record in MIMSY
so it can be tracked, but in the legal status field, we put in "education
collection" instead of "permanent collection."  We put a disclaimer on
the deed of gift stating that the objects have been accepted as
educational handling material and are not considered a part of the
permanent collection.
   While we would prefer these objects to have a healthy life span, we
know that in the course of their being handled it is likely they will be
destroyed, so it's just easier to only partially accession them.

Robin Lipp
Collections Manager
The Children's Museum of Indianapolis

On Fri, 26 Apr 1996, Janet Sweeting wrote:

> How does your musueum handle formal accessing of items in the education
> teaching collections for discovery rooms, loan materials, resource
> materials and whatever?  I'd like to know if you don't do anything and that
> is policy, or if you do something and what that policy is.  At present we
> don't do anything but I have been requested to set up a policy.  When the
> Office of Education began at Peabody in 1924, everything had formal
> accession numbers but this practice had disappeared during the 1950s.
> thanks for your help
> Janet Sweeting
>