How to record pre-acquisition objects

An institution receives objects for its collections in many different ways. These may be by:

  • Donation
  • Purchase
  • Auction
  • Loan

Until a decision has been made to accept an object into the collection, objects are classed as pre-acquisition. A pre-acquisition object is often recorded in a brief Catalog record that can be linked to Accession Lot, Location and Internal Movement records.

Typically a pre-acquisition record includes the following information:

  • General category, e.g. Natural Sciences, History & Technology
  • Type of item, e.g. Crate, Work
  • Object status, e.g. Provisional
  • Accession Lot details, e.g. Method, Date and Source of acquisition
  • Current location, e.g. Building, Room and Shelf Number

Institutions that receive numerous objects for consideration may choose to record pre-acquisition objects in groups rather than as individual objects. For example, if you receive 50 sketches for consideration, it may not be efficient to record each sketch as a separate Catalog pre-acquisition record. In this case:

  • One record is created for the group of sketches.
  • The sketches are located together and considered as one.
  • If one or more sketches are separated from the group, a new pre-acquisition record is created to record the details and location of this new group.

If a pre-acquisition object is not accepted into the collection, its status changes from Provisional or Pre-acquisition to Returned.

To record the non-acceptance of an object:

  1. Search the Catalog module for the required record.
  2. Change the status in the Object Status: (Object Details) field to indicate that the object has been rejected, e.g. Returned.
  3. Select the Location tab.
  4. Change the current location to indicate that the object has been returned, e.g. attach to a Location record which includes a Returned location description.