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 Catalogue 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 Catalogue 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.
How to record non-acceptance of a pre-acquisition record
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:
- Search the Catalogue module for the required record.
- Change the status in the Object Status: (Object Details) field to indicate that the object has been rejected, e.g. Returned.
- Select the Location tab.
- 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.