<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" class=""><div dir="auto" class="">First time responding to a thread here.</div><div dir="auto" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="auto" class="">Would the loss of French herbarium specimens due to Australia’s customs policies a few years back be relevant here?<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><a href="https://camd.org.au/quarantine-herbarium-destruction-protocol/" class="">https://camd.org.au/quarantine-herbarium-destruction-protocol/</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Alexandria Sun</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><a href="http://alexandriasun.weebly.com" class="">alexandriasun.weebly.com</a><br class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="ltr" class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">On Oct 14, 2020, at 3:30 PM, Omega Smith <acsmith777@gmail.com> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif" class="gmail_default">I know you specified *published*, so the farthest I professionally and personally can help you with the deplorable conditions in which collections at a certain museum were kept - conditions which I not only witnessed, but spent a year trying to ameliorate (as a worker there I only had so much power to give the fossil and mineral collections a safe environment, ironically). On the other hand, I believe I stil have somewhere at least one photograph of the black mold in one of the collections rooms and the video I took where I took a screw out of the floor of another collection that was extremely rusted due to recurring human waste flooding within that room. <br class=""></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif" class="gmail_default"><br class=""></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif" class="gmail_default">If you are asking for the sake of showing students what not to do, then I would suggest we talk about it sometime. I had mentioned these collection conditions (there are much more problems than the above) to the director at a previous museum for which I worked and he asked if I would tell him more about it so HE could warn students about some of the worst things that can happen to a collection.</div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif" class="gmail_default"><br class=""></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif" class="gmail_default">As far as the dirty laundry take - for that reason you will have a far harder time finding published material on this subject than unpublished, authoritative information. Let me know if you'd like to hear the information I have.</div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif" class="gmail_default"><br class=""></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif" class="gmail_default">Dr. Omega Smith</div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif" class="gmail_default"><a href="mailto:acsmith777@gmail.com" class="">acsmith777@gmail.com</a></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif" class="gmail_default"><br class=""></div><br class=""></div>
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