Addendum to the Gateway NRA Collection Management Plan: Archival and Manuscript Collection
Godwin DW and Banks E. 1996. Addendum to the Gateway NRA Collection Management Plan: Archival and Manuscript Collection. US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Northeast Museum Services Center
The purpose of this Archival Collection Management Plan is to provide guidance to Gateway National Recreation Area (GATE) in the management of their archival and manuscript collections. The purpose of a Collection Management Plan (CMP) is to provide "short-term and long-term guidance to park and center staffs in the management and care of museum objects and archival and manuscripts collections." Each site-specific CMP describes the current status of various aspects of the park's collection management program including, but not limited to, museum records, exhibits, storage, security and fire protection, archival and manuscript collections, use and access, and housekeeping. The CMP also provides recommendations for improvement in each area. In 1981 staff from the National Park Services' Curatorial Services Division made a site visit to Gateway National Recreation Area to gather data to write a Collection Management Plan for the park. The CMP, which was delivery to the park in 1986, covers the areas described above excepting the archival and manuscript materials. Consequently, in the fall of 1995, the park submitted to the Northeast Museum Services Center Steering Committee a project proposal requesting FY 1996 Museum Collection Preservation and Protection funds to have a CMP written for the archival materials at the park. The archival CMP is intended to be a supplement to the general Collection Management Plan written by the Curatorial Services Division staff. Because of the age of the current CMP, it is quite possible that GATE will request a new plan be written to address current collection related issues. If a new CMP is written, this report should [be] inserted as the archival chapter. As stated in the project task directive, the purpose of the project was to provide the park "...with a tool for putting in priority order the needs of GATE's archival and manuscript collections." The survey is intended to be the preliminary phase for planning a multi-year project to process the park's museum archival and manuscript collections.