Key Terms

Public Trust: responsibility the public places on government or other institutions to care for their interests

Interpretive Plan: document that guides exhibition production; includes summaries of all visitor evaluation, exhibition resources, educational goals, label text, and main idea.

Visitor Evaluation: research to assess visitors’ interactions with exhibitions or exhibition ideas; includes front-end, formative, and summative types.

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA): provides a process for museums and Federal agencies to return certain Native American cultural items -- human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, or objects of cultural patrimony -- to lineal descendants, and culturally affiliated Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations (National Park Service definition).

Historic Preservation Act of 1966, 1992: An act to establish a program for the preservation of additional historic properties throughout the nation

Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA): required that federally funded educational programs have an evaluation component; supported the growth of visitor studies

Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA): gives civil rights protections to individuals with disabilities similar to those provided to individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, age, and religion. It guarantees equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities in public accommodations, employment, transportation, state and local government services, and telecommunications (ADA Home Page definition)

Informed Consent: the process by which a human subjects researcher educates a subject to provide him/her with sufficient knowledge to consider whether or not to participate.

Public Domain: the absence of copyright protection for a creative work; works can enter the public domain by the deliberate surrender of the copyright by the creator of the work or by the expiration of the copyright due to the passage of some legally stipulated period of time.

Provenance: documented history of an artifact