Managing the metadata of the Native language archive at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is a task that requires fulfillment of a variety of needs. As a new collection, we seek to adhere to best practices in the management of information; we also seek to maintain adaptability, so our collection and its records can reflect technological developments. Moreover, we must also consider our duty as a public institution to provide access to our material in balance with our duty to protect the rights of the individuals and tribes who choose to contribute to our holdings. In addition to addressing archival standards and tribal preferences, however, we must also meet standards for the natural history museum of which we are a part. This involves an accession process that is designed for all museum departments, including life, earth, and social science objects in addition to our language media; the museum is furthermore in the process of moving to a new database, Specify, which will be used in all of its diverse collections.

This presentation will address the ways in which we strive to meet these needs, focusing primarily on three aspects of collection management: our accession and cataloging procedures, including metadata gathering; our work to design and implement an interface through which the collection and its records can be accessed while prohibiting improper usage of culturally sensitive materials; and our ongoing interactions with the developers of the Specify database toward a module that is adaptable to our data.