Southeast Utah Group: Museum Management Plan

National Park Service

The museum collections for the Southeast Utah Group come from four independent park units: Arches National Park (established as a monument in 1929 and as a national park in 1971), Canyonlands National Park (1964), Hovenweep National Monument (1923), and Natural Bridges National Monument (1908). The Southeast Utah Group is an informal, rather than an officially designated, unit of the National Park Service. The Southeast Utah Group Museum Management Plan identifies and describes a series of management issues facing the combined group collections and presents recommendations to address these issues. A team of museum management professionals developed this plan in full cooperation with members of the park staff responsible for park archives, museum collections, and library resources. This collaboration followed a survey of the park staff to determine current information and program support needs. The Group currently manages a known total of 584,494 individual items of cultural and natural significance that form the combined archives and museum collections. There are an additional estimated 94,000 items in undocumented archives presently held in the Group offices and unknown amounts of material held in the individual parks. The Group-wide library holdings are estimated at 5,000 individual items in both Interpretation and Resource Management Divisions. Park collections are expected to grow at a fairly rapid rate over the next decade due to the Service wide Inventory and Monitoring Program. Cultural collections will also continue to grow as sites are added to the park inventory with associated inventory, documentation, and compliance actions required. There will be a critical shortage of work and storage space during this time of projected growth. The current work/storage/study space requires renovation and reorganization to support the proper organization, documentation, preservation, and utilization of the existing collections. This situation will only worsen as more material is added. At present, neither the collections themselves nor the information about them is easily available for use by the staff. As a result, primary park resources are not contributing their full potential to park and group operations. The survey of park staff indicates a high level of need for well-organized and documented resources, as well as support for the actions necessary to accomplish this objective. The management of the combined group archives and museum collections of over half a million individual items is currently assigned to a half-time GS-1015/11 museum curator. The work load has resulted in some administrative and documentation concerns that could be addressed by additional staff time. This museum management plan offers recommendations that will help the Group move forward in a proactive and responsible manner.