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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Ellen - Oh absolutely, 25-30 years is
not "long" for the life of the collection, but a better option for
smaller museums with limited staffing who are unlikely to be given
the 'indefinite' option. The loaning and destructive sampling
stipulations may also be easier to negotiate for a
geology/paleontology collection than a biological one. My
colleague on campus who works in the Anthropology collection was
able to negotiate curating fees for all of their protected
specimens - but things that fall under NAGPRA are considered much
higher priority than, say, a drawer of invertebrate fossils. We
have an incredibly small staff (as I am the only full time
collections person) so the cataloging project would have been
overwhelmingly cumbersome had we not achieved a cooperative
financial agreement with the Park Service - likely also a rare
occurrence. I do agree with you that the interactions with
different park managers are not totally uniform from park to park
or institution to institution, which is interesting, considering
it is their aim to get to a unified national catalog someday. A
larger museum with a larger staff and collection might be able to
put down their foot and hold out for more control over their NPS
specimens, but my primary point was that (depending on the park, I
suppose) the terms of the "repository agreement" are in fact
negotiable and can be rewritten to satisfy your own collections
management needs - if you ask for it! If you have your results
from your '02 survey - I would be incredibly interested in reading
them.<br>
best,<br>
Carrie<br>
<br>
On 11/8/2012 10:14 AM, Ellen Paul wrote:<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><font face="Times New Roman, Times,
serif">Thanks, Carrie, for this valuable info. Just a couple
of observations:<br>
<br>
1. As all agreed at that 2008 summit I wrote about, in museum
collection terms, 25-30 years is not long-term. In people
terms, yes, but in terms of the collection itself, it is not.
<br>
2. Your repository agreement seems to be unusual, especially
with regard to loans and destructive sampling. <br>
3. The problem with the repository agreement generally is that
regardless of length, it ultimately allows the removal and
relocation of specimens or entire collections without any say
on the part of the museum. One of the key areas of discussion
at the 2008 summit is that the location of a specimen is based
on the underlying reason for its collection and on the
scientific purpose for collections generally. Mere physical
proximity to a given park, or the desire to put all specimens
from a given park in one location would result in reduction of
the integrity of the collection for which it was originally
collected. So the most obvious - a series intended to examine
clinal variation will have specimens from locations along the
cline, some of which may have been collected from one or more
parks. If someone now decides that they want all specimens
collected from those parks to be in one location, then these
series are disrupted. Conversely, if the purpose of the
collecting was to document the biodiversity of the park, then
removal of one or more specimens for the purpose, say (I am
obviously making this up) of creating a collection of all
birds found in national parks will undermine the integrity of
the collection that documented the biodiversity of the park. <br>
4. The designation of institutions as federal repositories is
part of what has fueled this worry I described. The rumors
have been circulating for years that the NPS was going to
either build its own warehouses - and yes, I use that term
deliberately - or designate certain museums in various regions
of the country - and consolidate the specimens collected on
units of public land managed by the National Park Service - in
those centers. <br>
5. I can't speak to your institution's policies or differences
between geology and biological collections, but most
biological collections actually prohibit long-term or even
indefinite loans. Call it a repository agreement, but it's
really a long-term loan. <br>
<br>
Generally, the repository agreements place a fairly stiff
burden on the museums to provide a substantial service but
offer no remuneration for those services. Yes, remuneration is
clearly NOT the primary purpose of housing and curating a
collection, but the point is that acting as a repository is
limiting in various ways. Starting with integration of the
specimens. If you may have to give it all back in X years, are
you going to integrate hundreds or thousands of specimens into
your collections or are you going to keep it segregated? <br>
<br>
I didn't receive Peter's email from yesterday, but this issue
of NPS numbers has been part of the discussion from the
beginning and it would be very burdensome for most collections
to go back and attach a second label to each of the specimens
and then record that second number. It also flies in the face
of current practice, which is to assign unique identifiers
(can of worms, I know). There are simpler ways to deal with
this than to add labels/tags and new numbers. Add a field in
the permanent record that identifies the item as having been
collected in a NP. <br>
<br>
Yes, over the years, the park-level people have been very
reasonable, even if their practices were not conforming to NPS
policy. If I had a dime for every time I've been told "the
manager at Park X told us not to worry about it, as far as he
was concerned, we own it and they will never ask for it back
and we can do whatever we want with it." Some of you may
remember that back when I was with AIBS, I did a survey on
this - 2002. Yes, 10 years ago. I will try to dig up the
results, but as best I can recall, about 1/2 the respondents
were surprised to learn that there was even an issue, because
the manager at the park where they worked told them something
to this effect. <br>
<br>
Ellen<br>
</font>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">Ellen Paul
Executive Director
The Ornithological Council
Email: <a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ellen.paul@verizon.net">ellen.paul@verizon.net</a>
"Providing Scientific Information about Birds<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://www.nmnh.si.edu/BIRDNET">"
http://www.nmnh.si.edu/BIRDNET"</a>
</pre>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
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<address><font face="Georgia"><i><b>Carrie Eaton</b></i></font></address>
<address><font face="Georgia"><i><b>Curator, UW Geology Museum</b></i></font></address>
<address><font face="Georgia"><i>1215 W. Dayton Street</i></font></address>
<address><font face="Georgia"><i>Madison, WI 53706</i></font></address>
<address><font face="Georgia"><i>(608) 262.4912</i></font></address>
<address><b><font color="#3333ff" face="Georgia"><i>carrie@geology.wisc.edu</i></font></b></address>
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