By Melissa Bowling

The Society of American Archivists (SAA) Museum Archives Section Working Group has been developing an online tool for the museum archives community to aid in the sharing of resources across institutions. Currently, the Working Group is gathering examples of forms, policies, and procedures to populate this online resource. You can view the resources that were gathered last year here.

At this time, the Working Group is trying to improve and expand this online resource to make it more useful to the museum archivist community. Based on a survey completed by Museum Archives Section members, as well as evaluative work, the Working Group has created a list of specific policies, procedures, and forms that it is trying to collect for it’s online resource. Please refer to the more detailed list, here, at the bottom of this post (here will be hyperlinked with an anchored link to the list). It is important to the Museum Archives Section Working Group that the resources selected for sharing represent different types of museums from many regions.

Once these documents are gathered, the Working Group will select examples of best practices to upload those to the SAA standards portal, as well as the Museum Archives website. All documents uploaded to the portal will be available to the public. Please note that not all of the documents that are collected will be uploaded to our site – the Working Group will be selecting diverse examples to share online.

The SAA Museum Archives Section would like to thank you in advance for your willingness to help build this valuable resource for the museum archives community.

Using the subject heading, “Museum Archives Resource Sharing,” please email submissions to melissa.bowling@metmuseum.org .

Requested Submission Documents:

• Social media policies
• Confidentiality or restriction policies
• Reader registration forms from small museums
• Collection development policies that discuss cooperative collecting
• Records management policies or manuals from non-art museums
• Records retention schedules from a public university museum
• Electronic records policies
• Electronic record retention schedules
• Mission statements or statements of purpose for non-art museums
• Preservation policies covering physical materials
• Preservation policies covering digital materials
• Processing manuals
• Standard series examples
• Consortium policies or agreements
• Space planning documents
• Disaster plans or plan sections covering digital assets
• Loan policies and forms
• Repository overviews or descriptions
• Assistant Archivist job descriptions or other job descriptions
• Oral history release agreements
• Access policies
• Digital asset management policies

2012-2013 Museum Archives Section Working Group: Barbara Austen, Pam Spriester Bell, Melissa Bowling, Rachel Chatalbash, Ryan Evans, Caroline LeFevre, Susan Miller, Dawn Sueoka, Lindsay Turley, Jennifer Whitlock, Brian Wilson