Policies, Standards & Guidelines

Standards & Guidelines

Our resources are currently under review - we've included some below, if you're still looking for more information please visit these excellent sites:

National Standards for Museums and Galleries

The new National Standards for Museums and Galleries will go a long way to enhancing the standards of museums and galleries nationwide and includes targets for best practice. This update has many new inclusions, key among them is a chapter on the proper handling, display and management of First Nations cultural material, thanks to the great work of Donna Biles Fernando and Debbie Abraham. The Taskforce was led by Museums & Galleries Queensland, with members Arts Tasmania; Australian Museums and Galleries Association Victoria; History Trust of South Australia; Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) and Museums & Galleries NSW.

Please find all resources linked to the new edition of the National Standards for Museums and Galleries below/here:

Download The National Standards for Australian Museums and Galleries 2.0 here.

Download First Peoples: A Roadmap for Enhancing Indigenous Engagement in Museums and Galleries here.

Donna Biles Fernando and Debbie Abraham's (re)Mapping National Standards Pathways: Embedding First Peoples Engagement in the National Standards for Australian Museums and Galleries here.

A recording of National Standards for Museums and Galleries launch event can be viewed here.

Collection Management

Small Museums Cataloguing Manual, 5th Edition, AMaGA Victoria
Collections Policy, University of Queensland
Collections Digitisation Policy, National Library of Australia
Collecting Cultural Material Australian Best Practice Guide, Ministry of the Arts
Victorian Collections

Significance

Significance 2.0: a guide to assessing the significance of collection aims to help collecting organisations, collections professionals and the broader public to determine the significance of cultural and heritage objects.

Significance 2.0, written by Roslyn Russell and Kylie Winkworth, was published in 2009 by the Collections Council of Australia.

Download Significance 2.0

Conservation

the best place to start is the Australian Institute for Conservation of Cultural Materials.

Guidelines on the Production and Preservation of Digital Audio Objects, International Association of Sound and Audio-visual Archives
Technical Preservation Handbook, National Film and Sound Archives
Preservation at Home, National Film and Sound Archives

Digitisation

Photographing your Collection, Museums Australia (Victoria) Practical Online Training
digitisation tool kit, GLAM PEAK
The US digital service: Digital Services Play book.
Oxford University, GLAM digital program

Social Media

social media strategy examples:

US National Archives
National Library of Australia, Communications and digital community strategy