High tech and low tech threats, public areas and storage areas, external
and internal thieves: where should museum security professionals put the emphasis for their
security program? The answer, of course, is that a comprehensive security program developed
with the aid of FocusMicro, Inc. will address the threats in all areas.
Museums in the United States and throughout the world have a curious widespread inability to be able to conclusively identify their own artifacts. Curators can usually provide good descriptions and photographs of an object as it is viewed by the public, but can rarely provide little more if any information beyond that. It’s these types of details that can make the difference in a positive identification, contributing heavily to the estimate that fewer than 10% of artifacts that are stolen each year are ever returned to their rightful owners.
Another interesting aspect surrounding museums’ operating practices is their frequent lack of inventory controls. Real or suspected missing items are known as ‘Administrative Losses’, a type of oversight that is frequently unreported and usually accounted as a cost of doing business. This type of negligence is unacceptable in most industries, yet most puzzlingly is almost commonplace in museums.
To combat the difficulties with the positive identification of artifacts
and antiquities, the Object ID project was initiated by the J. Paul Getty Trust in 1993, resulting
in a formal standard that was introduced in 1997. Adopted internationally, the Object ID standard
is not meant to replace other identification standards and specifications, but rather to set the
minimum requirements for positive object identification.
Frequently referred to as a core standard, Object ID delineates the minimum categories of essential information that are common to a broad range of documentation systems:
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Object ID was developed in a corroborative effort by several communities with vested interests in art and antiquities preservation:
– Cultural heritage organizations (including museums, national inventories, and archaeological organizations)
– Law-enforcement agencies
– Customs agencies
– The art trade
– Appraisers
– The insurance industry. The standard is designed to be implemented in traditional, non-computerized systems as well as in comprehensive database architectures. For more information about this constantly evolving standard, visit the Object ID website at http://www.object-id.com/.
