[NHCOLL-L:472] AGSO Plans to Discard 50% of Rock and Fossil Collections

Mon Feb 28 10:03:33 EST 2000

Fellow List Members,

The disturbing reports below are from PaleoNet.

All the best,

Doug
___________________________________________________________________________
>From paleonet-owner at ucmp1.berkeley.edu Thu Feb 24 23:36:15 NST 2000
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From: John.Laurie at agso.gov.au
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To: PaleoNet at ucmp1.berkeley.edu
Subject: paleonet dumping of part of AGSO rock and fossil collection
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 14:02:18 +1100
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Dear Paleonetters,

At the Australian Geological Survey Organisation (AGSO), several million
rock and fossil specimens are, in part, on the verge of being thrown out!
AGSO currently rents a repository off Australian Archives at Chester Hill in
western Sydney (for about $220,000 p.a.) in which it stores several hundred
thousand old analogue magnetic tapes of seismic data, which takes up many
tens of kilometres of shelf space. Much of this data is still important to
the petroleum exploration industry, having not been superseded, and cannot
readily be dumped. AGSO has now been forced to accept these tapes into
headquarters, never having tried seriously to transfer them onto new digital
media. Now that this has hit the fan, the most favoured solution is to get
rid of about 50% of the rock and fossil collections which have a replacement
cost of tens of millions of dollars. On the surface this seems simply a
difficult choice, until you realise that the collections will be gotten rid
of permanently, to allow for the temporary storage of these old tapes until
they are transferred to much more compact digital media. When these tapes
are put onto digital media, they will be able to be stored in a room maybe
5% the size of the current storage facility. But by that time, most, if not
all of the rock and fossil samples will be gone.

John Laurie

>From paleonet-owner at ucmp1.berkeley.edu Fri Feb 25 00:56:53 NST 2000
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From: John.Laurie at agso.gov.au
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To: PaleoNet at ucmp1.berkeley.edu
Subject: paleonet AGSO cull latest
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 15:22:14 +1100
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Dear paleonetters,

apparently there was a meeting this morning (I was not told about this;
symptomatic these days), at which it was decided that the cull of the rock
and palaeo collections at AGSO will go ahead. There will be a six week
period during which a protocol for disposal/retention will be developed,
followed by a six month period for its implementation.

So, all museum curators in Australia (and PNG) should expect to hear from me
sooner rather than later.

John R. Laurie

Curator

Australian Geological Survey Organisation
GPO Box 378			Tel: (02) 6249 9412
Canberra ACT 2601		Fax: (02) 6249 9979
Australia			E-mail: John.Laurie at agso.gov.au

Street Address:
Cnr Jerrabomberra Avenue & Hindmarsh Drive
Symonston ACT 2609

___________________________________________________________________________
Mr. W. Douglas Boyce, M.Sc., P.Geo., Provincial Paleontologist,
Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Mines and Energy,
Geological Survey Division, Regional Geology Section,
P.O. Box 8700, St. John's, NF, Canada A1B 4J6

Phone:	(709) 729-2163
Fax:	(709) 729-4270
Email:	wdb at zeppo.geosurv.gov.nf.ca
WWW:	http://www.geosurv.gov.nf.ca/mapping/boyce.html
	http://www.geosurv.gov.nf.ca/education/fossils/index.html
	http://www.canadianrockhound.com/summer97/smr97_nfld.html
	http://www.spnhc.org/documents/fossilprotection.htm
___________________________________________________________________________