Guidelines
The Office for Academic Heritage, Scientific and Art Collections is governed by the Recommendations of the German Council of Science and Humanities on "Scientific Collections as Research Infrastructures" adopted in January 2011 in Berlin. In addition, it complies with the position paper of the German Research Foundation on the Promotion of Information Infrastructure from 2018 and the guidelines of UMAC-ICOM, the International Committee for University Museums and Collections.
The German Council of Science and Humanities, the most significant advisory body on scientific policy in the Federal Republic of Germany, states in its recommendations from 2011 among others that:
"[ ...] Germany has a multifaceted collection landscape, which is available to academic users as a valuable infrastructure for their research. The remarkable scientific potential of the collection has already been proved many times over and used in academic publications and exhibitions. In addition to many renowned, outstandingly accessible and usable scientific collections, there are, however, especially numerous collections at universities, the potential of which, for various reasons – such as insufficient development, visibility, supervision, care, or accommodation – cannot be properly and fully tapped. The usability of the scientific collections' potential for research should be improved in the interests of the academic system, also so as to be able to answer currently pressing questions in terms of society as a whole. [...]"
The German Research Foundation formulates its goals in the position paper as follows:
"The aim is free and comprehensive access to analog and digital scientific information and networking of knowledge and data. [...] The construction of a coordinated system of information infrastructures for the scientific community is a dynamic process where the technical options for scientific work and its conditions, as well as usage requirements, depend on each other and are also subject to continuous change and the necessity for adaption."
Additional Notes
Other national and international action guidelines that the Office for Academic Heritage, Scientific and Art Collections is committed to can be found on the pages of the corresponding networks.