Section 3200.100  Definitions

"Attendance" means the documented number of visitors at the public museum's facility or facilities for the preceding calendar year.

"Care" means the keeping of adequate records pertaining to the provenance, identification and location of the museum's holdings, and the application of current professionally accepted methods to their security and to the minimization of damage and deterioration.

"Community" means the population base normally served by the museum.

"Department" means the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

"Director" means the Director of the Department.

"Fiscal Agent" means an affiliated entity that may expend and receive funds on behalf of the public museum.  If grant funds are to be distributed to a fiscal agent on behalf of the public museum, the chief executive officer of the public museum must sign a statement certifying:

that there is an ongoing relationship between the public museum and the fiscal agent;

that the fiscal agent may incur expenses for the public museum's project; and

that grant funds will be used specifically for the public museum's project.

"Museum Education Program" means utilizing the resources of the museum for formal or informal learning opportunities for school children, teachers, or other citizens through face to face interactions or through educational technology, including educational technology partnerships.  The public museum shall have at least one employee who devotes the preponderance of his/her time to offer "Museum Education Programs".  This person is expected to command an appropriate body of special knowledge in museum education consonant with the experience of his or her peers, to have access to and acquaintance with the literature of the field, and to work sufficient hours to meet adequately the current demands for museum educational services.

"Nonprofit" means that the public museum has documentary evidence of its tax-exempt status under the regulations of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

"Operating Expenditures" means funds actually expended by a public museum or its fiscal agent for the recurring day-to-day expenses that are ordinary and necessary to maintain and operate the facility for its principal purpose as a public museum.  These expenditures shall include:

the total amount of program and supporting services expenses (management and general) and fundraising expense that is reported on the entity's audited financial statements;

depreciation expense for the buildings, movable equipment, and other types of personal property; and

interest expenses on funds borrowed to finance operating expenditures.

"Organized" means that the public museum is a duly constituted body with expressed responsibilities.

"Permanent" means that the public museum has been open to the public, for its instruction and enjoyment, for at least 2 years and is expected to continue in perpetuity.

"Professional Staff" means that the public museum has at least one paid employee who commands an appropriate body of special knowledge and the ability to reach museological, zoological, aquarium, or botanical (whichever shall be applicable) decisions consonant with the experience of his or her peers, who has access to and acquaintance with the literature of the field, and who works sufficient hours to meet adequately the current demands of administration and care.

"Public Museum" means a facility that has been open to the public, for its instruction and enjoyment, for at least two years and that is operating for the purposes of promoting cultural development through special activities or programs or performing arts, and acquiring, conserving, preserving, studying, interpreting, enhancing, and, in particular, organizing and continuously exhibiting (subject to temporary interruption due to construction or catastrophe) specimens, artifacts, tangible objects, articles, documents and other things of historical, anthropological, archaeological, industrial, scientific or artistic import.

"Schedule" means regular and predictable hours that constitute substantially more than a token opening, so that access is reasonably convenient to the public (subject to temporary interruption due to construction or catastrophe).

"Tangible Objects" means specimens, artifacts, articles, documents; non-domesticated plants or animals, including fish;  and other things of historical, anthropological, archeological, industrial, scientific or artistic import that form the public museum's collections and have intrinsic value to history, science, art or culture.

"Unit of Local Government" means counties, municipalities, townships, special districts and units, designated as units of local government by Illinois law, that exercise limited governmental power or powers in respect to limited governmental subjects, but does not include school districts.

(Source:  Amended at 28 Ill. Reg. 2201, effective January 26, 2004)