Article on condition surveys

I would like to recommend an article by Joel Taylor and Siobhan
Stevenson, "Investigating subjectivity within collection condition
surveys", in Museum Management and Curatorship, v. 18, n.1,
1999:19-42.  This article provides a very effective format for
evaluating condition surveys.  I think that the "best practices"
workshop at Miami could benefit if this article were to be put on
the AIC's web page or made available on the internet through CoOL.
The discussion of the conception of the survey, its organization and
the comparisons of a group of surveyors, one of conservators, one of
curators, one of students and a control group is of great interest.
What is scored as needing treatment and what not, etc. lends for
those of us doing surveys some background for practice, and I think
would be of value to curators.  Now what we need is a study to find
how surveys are used by the institutions which have commissioned
them and how individual grant reviewers regard surveys by different
conservators.

Niccolo Caldararo
Director and Chief Conservator
Conservation Art Service


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 15:62
                  Distributed: Tuesday, March 12, 2002
                       Message Id: cdl-15-62-004
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