EMII European Standards Survey - Procedural Standards, Rules and Guidelines 2.1

European Standards Survey

Procedural Standards, Rules and Guidelines 2.1 - Portugal

2.1 Collections Management
We are interested in which published Collections Management standards are in use in your country and also any unpublished in-house or evolving standards. These may take the form of procedures, rules or guidelines.

i. Overall Comments:

It is possible to say that, in general Portuguese museums that are undertaking the digitization of their collections are acquainted with international guidelines and standards of collections management such as the CIDOC (Guidelines for the Description of Objects of Art) or ICONCLASS or AAT that they try to adapt to their own procedures or specificity of their collections.

Nevertheless, since this presents several difficulties, museums often ask for assistance to the IPM, the institution of Central Administration who has the obligation to divulge general procedures for classification of collections, standards and guidelines for movable heritage inventory and cataloguing. The need to divulge these guidelines in the various fields of collections management amongst museums belonging to the Ministry of Culture but also to all the other museums, has been defined as a priority of action which has determined the definition of several publications aimed to collection classification methods but also concerning procedures in cataloguing, handling and care, conservation, storage and circulation guidelines, some of which have already been published and others being elaborated with museum professionals, and will be published during the next three years.

Besides these general guidelines, there is also a strong need to divulgue other instruments, namely thesauri and vocabulary and term lists. In this particular area we feel that collaboration with other institutions that have a wider experience and production in this area will be very important in order to ensure a better access and provide wider information dissemination in Portuguese museums.

ii. Collections Management Software in Use:

MATRIZ (Commercially available)
ParaRede
Av. Jose Malhoa n21
1070-157 Lisboa
Portugal

INARTE (Commercially available)
Sistemas do Futuro
Centro Empresarial do Capitolio
Av. de Frana, 256, 4, Sala 4.3
4050 Porto
Portugal

Inventarios
Gesto Integral do Patrimnio Cultural (Commercially available)
C.O.M.
Rua Fernando Palha, 50/54 - Ed.Simol
1900-695 Lisboa
Portugal

DOCBASE (Commercially available)
DID, Documentaçã Informatica e Desenvolvimento, LDA.
Avenida Ressano Garcia 27/RC
1070 Lisboa

ENDOVELICUS (Commercially available)
(although this is a software to register archaeological sites, using geographical information systems, it include some fields where you can add and describe the objects associated with a particular site)
Chiron / Sistemas de Informação
Edificio Univova
Campus da Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia / Universidade Nova de Lisboa
2825-114 Monte da Caparica

Standard Details
Standard Name:
Normas Gerais de Inventário / Artes Plásticas / Artes Decorativas (General Guidelines for Documenting Museum Collections / Decorative and Fine Arts)
Standard Type:
De jure
Number of Museums:
50
Number of Objects Covered:
c1,000,000
Usage by Significant Collections (Institution name(s)):
Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga Museu Nacional do Azulejo Museu Nacional Machado de Castro Museu Nacional de Soares dos Reis Museu Nacional de Arqueologia Museu do Chiado Museu Nacional de Arqueologia Museu Calouste Gulbenkian National Palaces

Standard Details
Standard Name:
Procedures for Circulation of Museum Objects
Standard Type:
De facto
Number of Museums:
28
Number of Objects Covered:
c1,000,000
Usage by Significant Collections (Institution name(s)):
Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga Museu Nacional do Azulejo Museu Nacional Machado de Castro Museu Nacional de Soares dos Reis Museu Nacional de Arqueologia Museu do Chiado Museu Nacional de Arqueologia

Standard Details
Standard Name:
Rules for the Production, Reproduction and Purchase of Photographs of the Cultural Assets of IPM Museums
Standard Type:
De jure
Number of Museums:
28
Number of Objects Covered:
c1,000,000
Usage by Significant Collections (Institution name(s)):
Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga Museu Nacional do Azulejo Museu Nacional Machado de Castro Museu Nacional de Soares dos Reis Museu Nacional de Arqueologia Museu do Chiado Museu Nacional de Arqueologia

Standard Details
Standard Name:
General Procedures and Rules for the Production of Museums Publications
Standard Type:
Evolving
Number of Museums:
28
Number of Objects Covered:
c1,000,000
Usage by Significant Collections (Institution name(s)):
Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga Museu Nacional do Azulejo Museu Nacional Machado de Castro Museu Nacional de Soares dos Reis Museu Nacional de Arqueologia Museu do Chiado Museu Nacional de Arqueologia

Submission Details

i. Submitted by:	Isabel Cordeiro
ii. Job title:	Head of Registration and Cataloguing Department
iii. Organisation:	Instituto Português de Museus
iv. E-mail:	dsi@ipmuseus.pt
v. Date Submitted:	27/04/2000

Funded by the European Commission - DGX - Ra phaël Programme