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In a significant way, through the budget process, the Institution has redirected current federal funds to meet high priority needs and has applied unrestricted trust fund income as self-help contributions to maintain the administrative support balance and to strengthen programs of acquisition, research, and education.  Such efforts will continue to the best of the Institution's ability given the pressures at work on the federal budget from inflation and rising public use of our services, and given the uncertainty surrounding the continued availability of unrestricted trust income from auxiliary and other activities.  Although the present revenues are encouraging, the Institution's management feels only guardedly optimistic about the next five-year projection of such income.  As in all business cycles, the public acceptance of the Institution's products or services, for example, those performed by the National Associates, is speculative.  It is quite possible that in the next five years the Magazine, which is the most popular of the Associates' activities, may suffer a decline in its success contingent with the business cycle.  Similarly, purchases in the Institution's shops, sales of books or records, or the sale of other products issued through the Associates' activities as services for them, may decline.  As with any such projections, therefore, it seems imperative that appropriate safeguards should be taken against the assumption that the expansion of these activities will continue in an unbroken progressive curve.

The Institution will continue to pursue the following principal objectives over the next five years.

[[table, 2 columns]]
[[underlined]] Objectives | Principal Funding Source(s) [[/underlined]]

[[underline]] Operations [[/underline]] |

1.  To strengthen museum operations in the documentation and care of the collections through inventories, the future development of informational retrieval systems, and conservation of museum collections.  By mid-FY 1983, it is planned that most inventories, tailored to the needs of different types of specimens and objects, will be completed, and that those collections to be relocated to the Museum Support Center will have been fully inventoried to enable immediate retrieval and use. | Federal Appropriations

2. To improve the level of technical assistance and program funds which encourage original research by the Institution's professional staff in science, history, and art, priority is placed on stimulating innovative approaches to research through competition and outside peer evaluation, and through in-residence fellowships for aspiring junior scholars of national and international reputation. | Federal Appropriations and Nonappropriated Unrestricted Trust Funds

[[/table]]