Collection & Operational Development

Our assessment process is structured to capture deep institutional context while minimizing disruption to your daily operations. The engagement begins with a review of your existing documentation, followed by confidential 1:1 interviews with personnel across all tenures and roles. We then conduct a multi-day onsite visit to observe physical storage areas, reading rooms, and operational workflows firsthand. The process concludes with a presentation to share findings and foster shared buy-in across leadership and staff.

Each area assessed in our comprehensive report is paired with an explicit “Impact Statement” detailing the exact operational, legal, ethical, or physical consequences of inaction. These statements provide the objective, evidence-based documentation leadership needs to demonstrate urgency and successfully secure capital resources from university administrators, institutional boards, private donors, and grant-making organizations.

A combination of state law and organization policy comes into play here. Our team will help  establish a timeline for received items and advise on how to rehome or dispose of them. Approaches will vary based on a few factors, but there is a path forward so that you’re not stuck with these unwanted items forever!

When deaccessioning takes place suddenly and “mysteriously,” Board and community members can become alarmed. We’ll create an easy-to-understand deaccession policy backed by best practices that will put people at ease and quickly become your organizational standard.

This work isn’t easy, but it can be done. As experts, we help moderate and guide stakeholder conversations so they can better understand why evolving the collection policy to be more inclusive is a net positive.