Since the first edition was published in 1958, Museum Registration Methods has defined the profession and served as a fundamental reference for all aspects of collections registration, care, and management. The sixth edition of Museum Registration Methods is a comprehensive guide to registration and collections management for museums, from acquisition to use and deaccessioning.
The authors and other contributors come from a wide variety of museums and specializations. The 56 chapters in this edition are either new or updated, and include the history of the profession, the role of the registrar in the museum, managing very large collections, developing and implementing collection management policies, documentation of collections, accessioning, condition reports, deaccessioning, repositories, and provenance research. Contemporary and digital art, living and natural history collections, loans, exhibitions, found-in-collection objects, shipping, records management, and electronic data management are also addressed, along with object handling and numbering, digitization, condition reporting, preventive care, storage on and off-site, inventory, moving and packing, shipping nationally and internationally, couriering, risk assessment, security, insurance, integrated pest management, ethics, sustainability, sacred and culturally sensitive objects, intellectual property rights, appraisal, ethical and legal issues, and research.
The book includes a comprehensive resource list, glossary, hypothetical situations to ponder, and model collection forms.
John E. Simmons (B.S., systematics and ecology; M.A., museum studies) began his professional career as a zoo keeper before becoming a collection manager at the California Academy of Sciences and later at the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas, where he also served as Director of the Museum Studies Program until 2007. Simmons has extensive experience in biological field work in Latin America and SE Asia. He has published more than 150 papers and books on museology and the care of collections, particularly for natural history. Since 2008 Simmons has run Museologica, an international museum consulting service. In addition, he has taught workshops and university classes in the US, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East on the care of collections and legal and policy issues in collection management, and served as thesis advisor for five museology graduate students at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogota). Simmons received the Superior Voluntary Service Award (American Alliance of Museums, 2001); the Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Mentoring of Graduate Students at (University of Kansas, 2005); the Carolyn L. Rose Award for Outstanding Commitment to Natural History Collections Care and Management (Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections, 2011); the Dudley-Wilkinson Award of Distinction (Registrars Committee of the American Alliance of Museums, 2016); and the Spiritus Award for Excellence in Service and Management of Herpetological and Ichthyological Collections (American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, 2029). Simmons has taught training sessions on care of natural history collections for curators of the Department of the Interior, Smithsonian Natural History Museum, Museum Study LLC, and for museum staff worldwide. Simmons was the keynote speaker for theConservation des colecciones d'Histoire naturelle en fluids: Retours d'expériences et perspetives at the Muséum national d'Historie naturelle, Paris in December 2018.
