Abandoned Property: Personal property to which the owner has intentionally relinquished all rights (e.g. property that an owner failed to claim within a reasonable length of time).
Accession: The act of recording / processing an addition to the permanent collection.
Accession Register / Log: A paper or electronic record of accession information; a document that includes the accession number, date, and nature of acquisition (bequest, donation, fieldwork, gift, purchase, etc.), source, brief identification and description, condition, provenance, value, and name of staff member recording the information.
Accession Number: A number or code assigned to uniquely identify a group of records or materials acquired by a repository and used to link the materials to associated records.
Custody: Temporary or permanent possession of an object.
Deaccession: The formal removal of an accessioned object from the collection.
Deed of Gift: A contract that transfers ownership of an object to an institution.
Gift: The voluntary transfer of ownership of property completely free of restrictions.
Incoming Loan: An object sent from another institution for a specified length of time without transfer of ownership.
Indefinite Loan: A loan that does not have a set duration or termination date.
Inventory: An itemized list of objects in a collection, often including current location.
Loan Agreement: A contract between a lender and a borrower specifying the object, loan conditions, and the responsibilities of each party.
Outgoing Loan: An object that is sent to another institution for a specific length of time without transfer of ownership.
Permanent Loan: An oxymoron used in a reference to a loan with no specified ending date.
Promised Gift / Deferred Donation: A donation in which the donor retains ownership of an object for a specific period of time.
Provenance: A term describing the history of ownership of museum objects; the background and history of ownership.
Registration: The process of entering information about museum holdings into a recordkeeping system; the process of assigning an accessioned object to a unique place in a serial order list of the contents of a collection.
Undocumented Objects: Objects that have no numbers, no information in their housing or any characteristics that might connect them to documentation.
