Deaccessions

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Removals of objects from a museum, library or archive collection, usually by sale or transfer to another institution ; the disposal of holdings or assets that an organization no longer wishes to keep
2. The formal withdrawals of artworks or books from a permanent collection, often to sell them off ; instances of an institution giving up or disposing of its owned items
3. Acts of taking pieces out of a collection held by a museum or library, typically to sell or give away ; the sales or transfers by which organizations shed items they own

Etymology: "Deaccessions" is the plural of "deaccession," a noun meaning the removal of an item from a museum, library or other collection. The word is built from the prefix "de-," meaning "down," "away" or "reversing an action," attached to "accession," which in this sense means the formal addition of an object to a collection. The reversal is the point: a collecting institution accessions an object when it takes it in, and deaccessions it when it lets it go. The base word has a long history. "Accession" comes from Latin "accessio," meaning "approach" or "addition," from "accedere," "to come near" or "to go to." Its older English sense was simply an increase or a coming into a state or office, and the collection-related sense developed from that idea of something being added to a whole. "De-" is the Latin prefix "dē-," which in English compounds usually signals removal or reversal, as in "decode" or "defrost."

Antonyms: acquisition