John E. Simmons has been a zookeeper, collections manager, field collector, university lecturer, editor, writer, and consultant. He currently teaches workshops and museum studies classes in the United States and internationally and serves as Associate Curator of Collections for the Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum & Art Gallery at Penn State University. Toni Kiser is the Assistant Director for Collections Management at The National WWII Museum. She oversees all aspects of registration and collection management and has worked on various projects including large exhibition installations, digitization projects, storage moves, artifact re-housing, and cataloging and nomenclature standards.
As strong as ever, this edition benefits all kinds of museums--from art to natural history--and all sizes of museums--from large to small. Its structure is straightforward and useful, good for seasoned professionals as well as those newer to the practice. The edition nicely blends extensive updating where necessary (e.g. sections on digital practices) while remaining strong in other more foundational areas (e.g. manual records systems, still used in many museums). No wonder it is referred to as the 'bible' of museum registration!--Kiersten F. Latham, Director of Arts & Cultural Management and Museum Studies, Associate Professor in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design at Michigan State University Museum Registration Methods has been, for many years, one of the most authoritative, dependable, and detailed books in the collections management and registrarial domain. MRM 6, edited by John E. Simmons and Toni M. Kiser, builds on the MRM heritage and takes it to a new level of expert and professional greatness. The 6th edition has been thoroughly updated, expanded, and deepened in its scope and breadth of museum collections knowledge, written with a keen awareness of the demands of this field in the 21st century. It is as useful for the newcomer as it is for the veteran collections professional, is relevant to all collections areas of specialization and scholarship, and manages to convey an enormous amount of information at a highly readable and accessible level. Simmons and Kiser have overseen a magnificent update of this classic reference handbook. It should be on the working bookshelves of every museum collection.--Sally Shelton, assistant chair, Heritage and Museum Sciences Graduate Program, The Museum of Texas Tech University