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 (BA, Systematics & Ecology; MA, Museum Studies) has worked in museums for more than 50 years. He began his career as a zoo keeper before becoming collections 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. He is the recipient of the Superior Voluntary Service Award from the American Association of Museums (2001), the Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Mentoring of Graduate Students from the University of Kansas (2005), the Carolyn L. Rose Award for Outstanding Commitment to Natural History Collections and Management from the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (2011), the Dudley-Wilkinson Award of Distinction from the Registrars Committee of the American Alliance of Museums (2016), and the Spiritus Award for Excellence in Service and Management of Herpetological and Ichthyological Collections from American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (2019). John has published more than 150 papers and several books, including Cuidado, Manejo y Conservación de las Colecciones Biológicas (2005, with Yaneth Munoz-Saba), Fluid Preservation: A Comprehensive Reference (2014), Foundations of Museum Studies: Evolving Systems of Knowledge (2014, with Kiersten Latham), Herpetological Collecting and Collections Management (3rd edition, 2015), Museums: A History (2016), Things Great and Small: Collections Management Policies (2nd edition, 2017), the chapter on "Collections Management: History, Theory, and Practice" in The International Handbook of Museum Studies (2015), Best Practices in the Preservation and Management of Fluid-Preserved Biological Collections (with Dirk Neumann, Julian Carter, and Oliver Crimmen), and he edited the 6th edition of Museum Registration Methods in 2020 (with Toni Kiser). John's research interests include the conservation of natural history and anatomical specimens, the history of museums, and the development of sustainable collections management practices. John currently runs Museologica museum consulting and teaches museology workshops and university classes.
Toni Kiser is the Assistant Director for Collections Management at The National WWII Museum. She oversees all aspects of registration and collection management and has worked on various projects including large exhibition installations, digitization projects, storage moves, artifact re-housing, and cataloging and nomenclature standards.
