Viewing page 258 of 272

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-242-

OM 804
9/21/78

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
PLAN FOR COLLECTIONS INVENTORIES

1. PURPOSE. The purpose of this plan is to establish policies and procedures for achieving and maintaining inventory control over the collections in all Smithsonian Institution museums.

2. POLICY. It is Smithsonian Institution policy to:

. assign responsibility for collection inventories to the individual museum directors

. require that collections management programs for each museum include procedures for the conduct of collection inventories appropriate to the nature and characteristics of the collections

. require that formal reports of inventory results be prepared and distributed to designated officials

. maintain a procedure for monitoring compliance with inventory schedules

. require that missing, lost, or stolen items be reported immediately upon discovery

3. INVENTORY PLAN. The Institution's plan for accomplishing and maintaining inventory control over collections includes the following features:

a. [[underlined]] Comprehensive inventories [[/underlined]]-regularly scheduled cyclical inventories of all collections, designed according to procedures appropriate for the characteristics of objects, works, artifacts, or specimens in the several collections and conducted by the responsible curatorial and/or registrarial personnel in the individual bureaus.

b. [[underlined]] Spot-check inventory [[/underlined]]--an annual spot-check inventory of selected items in each museum, planned by the Office of Audits and conducted by an impartial team whose membership must include an auditor and a person familiar with the subject area but with no direct curatorial responsibility for the collections being checked.

c. [[underlined]] Statistical inventory reports. [[/underlined]]

(1) For each comprehensive inventory, a statistical report is prepared by the museum's registrar.

(2) For each spot-check inventory a statistical report is prepared by the Office of Audits.

For distribution of copies, see 4a(5).