Community Design Workshop Notes - Acquisition

Research

1. Suggest area of attention or interest for acquisition. Identify gaps as part of strategic planning for collection.
2. Narrow to strategic areas and opportunities. May have processes around managing this filter.
3. Collecting support material for an object before actually acquire the object. Associate research on collections and possible additions. Information flow around research before acquisition is interesting, worth archiving. Can support education. May even be object of exchange among institutions - "we researched that object, and will trade for your research on this other one."
4. Offer of donation, or may be active collecting.
   1. Consider this in much the same manner as research on potential
      acquisitions
5. Consider policy around items, as a filter on whether to acquire or not (or
   consider modifying policy to reflect donation).
6. Gather support material to present to committee, for arguing for
   acquisition. Lots of research, often lost (not integrated).
   1. Legal phase - identify conflicts or regulations that may apply. May be
      local laws as well as international laws
   2. Scientific/Analytical phase. May involve exchange of information with
      another institution.
      1. Establishing provenance and authenticating reliability.
      2. Provenience, Dating, condition
      3. Relation to existing collection
      4. Artist and other information
      5. May require itemizing a bulk donation to break into different
         objects for consideration.
   3. Identify costs of acquisition and curation. Considering the relative cost (is it a good deal?), etc.

Issue around information sharing and "daylighting" the process of information gathering, presentation, deliberation. This implies a requirement for access policy around all the information flows for this process. Includes access to artifacts of the deliberation, etc.

Present to committee for approval. Output is yes or no.

1. Initial yes - recommend for consideration
2. May require a second phase by some board
3. Note that for an active scenario, this may just be a decision to try to acquire the object. This implies another step that in an auction scenario, may be lots of juggling of priorities and decisions on what to bid and on which items from a collection, etc.

This may involve cataloging the documents of research, and then connecting the objects. Important for DocMgmnt. Also important for ephemeral artifacts. Related information: Collection policy.

May be formal or ad hoc. May come with a given curator. Policy may include minimum standards on documentation, etc.

Question: is there a difference between a physical artifact and a born-digital artifact? Authenticity issues, when every copy is a real artifact?