Here at the Royal BC Museum, a large (for Canada) public museum and archives, we have entered into discussions over the roles of conservators versus registrars, collection managers/curatorial assistants, preparators and "object handlers". Historically, in addition to regular conservation treatments and preventive conservation tasks, the conservators at our institution have been responsible for all condition reporting, installing artifacts in exhibits, packing and crating objects for loan and travelling exhibitions, and providing courier services when necessary. We currently have two people who staff our Central Registration department and their work does not usually involve any collection handling. We do not have Object Handlers per se, but rather conservators, preservation technicians/conservation technicians and collection managers (similar to curatorial assistants). However, we're aware that some other institutions have larger registration departments and/or distribute responsibilities differently to other staff members. We would be very interested to have answers to the following questions from other medium to large public museums:
1. How many conservators, registrars, collection managers/curatorial assistants, preparators, object handlers or other collections staff, including curators if they do some of this work, in your institution? 2. Which staff members are responsible for: a) condition reporting material for loans and exhibits? b) installations and couriering objects when necessary? c) collection packing for loans and travelling exhibitions? 3. If other staff members are responsible for condition reporting and collection packing, what training do they have for these tasks? 4. Do you have a written policy/procedure for determining when it is necessary to send a courier with loans of collections? We appreciate your input as we face possible restructuring of our organization. Kasey Lee Senior Conservator Royal BC Museum 675 Belleville Street Victoria, BC Canada V8W 9W2 k...@royalbcmuseum.bc.ca<mailto:k...@royalbcmuseum.bc.ca> ****** Unsubscribe by sending a message to consdistlist-le...@cool.conservation-us.org Searchable archives: http://cool.conservation-us.org/byform/mailing-lists/cdl/
