Table 7. Funding - Group 1

Issues:

1. Endowment of collections
   • Problems with U.S. Treasury policy - no capital funds in interest-bearing accounts
2. Funding for new projects

Recommendations:

1. Lobbying efforts for change in U.S. Treasury policy.
   • Solicit funds from private sector (fund-raising firms, foundations)
   • One time appropriation
2. Private Sector Funds
   • Corporations
   • Foundations
   • Philanthropic contributions
3. Check-off box on IRS income tax forms

Table 7. Funding - Group 2

Issues:

1. Tapping into "Millenium" funding to support curation.
2. Tapping into agency funds for technical and education assistance to tribes.

Recommendations:

1. Tie funding arguments to Congress to "digestible" concepts (1st grade level maybe).
2. Get a high level marketer - Rick West.
3. Contact National Education Association and see how their grass-roots organization creates an issue and markets it.
4. Also AARP (American Association of Retired Persons).

Table 8. Education/Marketing Strategies - Group 1

Issues:

1. Increase accessibility - communicate the value of collections.
2. Increase awareness of the resource.
3. Collections management is not emphasized in university-level instruction in archaeology or natural history disciplines.
4. Provide the museum profession with a more broad-based interdisciplinary understanding of collections care.
5. Public education places a low priority on access to primary resources.
6. Schools should make more tangible commitments and policy initiatives endorsing cooperation with custodians of collections.

Recommendations:

1. Grant/project proposals should include resources for ongoing maintenance of collections.
2. Make collections storage and processes more visible to the public.
3. More emphasis in the schools on science processes that are naturally mirrored in collections work.
4. Increase outreach efforts to schools and workshops for teachers.
5. Employ studies of our audiences' needs.
6. Demands for "visibility" are not always compatible with collections care and management tasks.
7. Appeal to shared senses of responsibility and stewardship.
8. Make the care of collections a less "exclusive" process, involving the general audience and the people who identify most closely with the collections.
9. Broad initiative to implement technologies well-suited to education.

Table 8. Education/Marketing Strategies - Group 2

Issues:

1. How do you market remote museums/collections? (i.e. access to areas/sites usually made by long drives, train, or plane).
2. How do you target both broad audiences or special groups at the same time?

Recommendations:

1. Utilize the web and/or satellite technology to your best advantage.
2. Continue outreach programs to schools- teach, teach, teach!!!
3. Initiate activity or project - do not wait for others.
4. Partnerships should first exist within your organization - then seek out external partnerships.
5. Turn negative situations/publicity into a positive strategy.

Table 9. Increasing Access

Issues:

1. Intellectual property and access (also access for science vs. commercial ventures).
2. Access of information - electronically information infrastructure (standards, meshing systems).
3. What is increasing access? How to convince agencies to do it.
4. Access from our own collections, for other collections.
5. Access to outside researchers.
6. Public access (shift from curation facility to virtual museum, outreach)
7. What have other people done? Make our research available to others.
8. Physical access to recommend funding, additional work needed, etc.
9. Different levels of access
   • Public
   • Funding agency
   • Tribes
10. How to develop funding without knowing what accessibility issues are.
11. Other ways to increase access.
    • Traveling exhibits
    • PBS specials

Recommendations:

1. Create/promote your "own personal museum" on the web because information is linked to increase public's access.
2. Make more information available which requires an increase of money, information on objects.
3. Standards - agreement on what things are called, how information is organized.
4. It has got to be an incremental process to work in the long-run.
5. "Require" 6-10 sets of information for each database (I like a "card catalog" - go to the "book" for more specific information), i.e.:
   • who
   • what
   • county
   • state
   • etc.
   as a start to integrate massive amounts of information (then each individual database could have its own focus).
6. Intellectual property, access - scientific vs.

Table 10. Clarifying Ownership - Group 1

Issues:

1. Native American vs. Government ownership (definition of)
2. Tribal boundaries cross international borders.
3. Artifact losses/limited access due to government control.
4. Barrier to repatriation is government concern for proper curation by tribes.
5. Difficult to repatriate in Mexico due to lack of legislation.
6. U.S. lacks legislation to prohibit moving collections (Native American) out of the country.
7. Ritual objects taken from tribal lands.
8. Cultural differences in defining ownership.
9. Some tribes do not agree on usefulness of NAGPRA.

Recommendations:

1. Greater understanding of cultural views/perceptions.
2. Use NAGPRA to understand and confront cultural differences and to make progress.
3. Greater dialogue between tribes and government.
4. Strengthen international connections to return Native American collections to tribes in U.S. (Keepers of the Treasures).

Table 10. Clarifying Ownership - Group 2

Issues:

1. Identification of ownership with respect to legality.
2. Identification of source, i.e.: inventory/source documentation.
3. Most museums do not have the information/provenance readily available.
4. Too many federal agencies with overlapping requirements.
5. Different federal agencies and people within the same agency interpreting regulations differently.

Recommendations:

1. Simplify federal level oversight, e.g.: consolidation of reporting to one entity.
2. Resolution of ownership.
3. Acknowledgment by federal government by providing financial support.
4. Consolidated effort by museum community to lobby/support.
5. Avoidance of crisis mindset.