American Association of Museums

CurCom – Curators’ Committee

Code of Ethics Workgroup

A Bibliography & List of Useful Websites

April 21, 2008

Articles and publications:

AAM Technical Information Service’s Forum, Writing a Museum Code of Ethics, Washington, DC: AAM, 1994.

      This publication contains a collection of very useful articles, in particular see:  Dr. Robin W. Lovin, "What is Ethics," pp. 15 - 20.

AAM Technical Information Center, “Standards and Best Practices for Museums,” Information Center Fact Sheet, June, 2007.

Gary Edson,  Museum Ethics, London: Routledge, 1997.

Linda Eppich, "Ethics and the Museum Collection," NEMA News, (Fall 2005), p. 2-3.

Harry Philbrick, "Exhibition Ethics in the Non-collecting Museum: Looking Through the Other End of the Telescope and Finding Someone Looking Back,"

NEMA News, (Fall 2005), p. 6-7.

Stephen L. Williams, "Critical Concepts Concerning Non-Living Collections," Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals,

      (August 2004), p. 37-66.

American Association of Museum On-line Resources:

A Code of Ethics for Museums,” American Association of Museums, 2000.

http://www.aam-us.org/museumresources/ethics/coe.cfm

Commission Statements on Best Practices and Other Policies,” Accreditation Commission, American Association of Museums, nd.
http://www.aam-us.org/museumresources/accred/MoreStandards.cfm

Accreditation Standards: Approach, Framework and Application,” Accreditation Commission, American Association of Museums, nd.
http://www.aam-us.org/museumresources/accred/accred-standards.cfm
      in particular see “Characteristics of an Accreditable Museum.”

Sample Codes of Ethics:

Jackie Weisz, compiler, Codes of Ethics and Practice of Interest to Museums, AAM Technical Information Service, Washington, DC: AAM, 2000

      An AAM publication that includes over sixty sample Codes of Ethics. 

American Institute for Conservation – “Code of Ethics and Guidelines of Practice,” 1994.
http://aic.stanford.edu/pubs/ethics.html

Museums Association (United Kingdom),  “Code of Ethics for Museums,” 2002.
http://www.museumsassociation.org/asset_arena/text/07/codeofethics_2007.pdf

This sample Code of Ethics was perhaps the strongest model we discovered during our literature survey.

Paolo Cherchi Usai, "A Charter of Curatorial Values," Journal of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia, (Spring 2006), p. 1-10.

Other Useful Websites:

The Independent Sector – a membership organization of charities and non-profit organizations.

http://www.independentsector.org/

See in particular:

Lorie Slutsky and M. Cass Wheeler, Co-conveners, Panel on the Nonprofit Sector, Principles of Good Governance and Ethical Practice, October, 2007.

Taskforce Ethics and Accountability Committee, “Statement of Values and Code of Ethics for Charitable and Philanthropic Organizations, “ February, 2004.

Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at the Illinois Institute of Technology – organized in 1976, the CSEP sponsors research and promotes education on ethics and moral principles in professional organizations. 

http://www.iit.edu/departments/csep/

The website includes several useful publications with source materials to support writing a code of ethics and a search engine for over 500 sample Codes of Ethics.  See in particular:

Andrew Olsen, “Authoring a Code of Ethics: Observation of Process and Organization,” 1998.