Acquisition Service Description and Assumptions

Description

The Acquisition Service facilitates the set of activities that results in the addition of collection objects and associated information to the collections of the organization and their possible accession to the permanent collections.

According to the relevant SPECTRUM procedure, Acquisition encompasses a set of separate, but related, activities, which include:

Deciding whether to acquire the object for the: permanent collections; handling collections;
auxiliary collections; or research collections;
Establishing legal transfer;
Allocation of a unique number and labelling and/or (where possible) physically marking the
object with it;
Entry in accession register (if an addition to the permanent collections);
Entry in any other appropriate register or listing (if not part of the permanent collections).

Some of the considerations involved in deciding whether an item should be acquired, and guidance around the timeframes in which such decisions might be made, are nicely summarized by the American Museum of Natural History Paleo Portal: Acquiring.

Assumptions

Most collection objects acquired by a museum or other institution will also be accessioned into the institution's permanent collection(s).

Some collection objects that are acquired may not be accessioned, however. One example: books or educational materials that are used by museum staff, but which are nonetheless managed by the collection management system, alongside accessioned objects.

Key Concepts

Especially things that become common sense, and so usually missed by new reviewers

Dependencies

Note other services that are consumed or that are closely related to this one:

ID Service

Background Documentation

Acquisition Requirements

If we have notes from community design meetings, link to them here.
If we have relevant sections in Spectrum or another such document, link to them here (or cite section numbers, etc.)

Key Team Members

(Name(s) of members) is/are the primary tech team member(s) for this service
Need to identify the community members acting as Domain Experts.