[Nhcoll-l] Collections insurance values

[Anita Cholewa]

Of course museum specimens, by their very nature, are irreplaceable so a
valuation should be infinite.
However, from an insurance standpoint (and let's be honest, there has to be
some minimum value put on these things) you might want to check with an
institution such as the Smithsonian or the Field Museum as to how a
valuation can be assessed.

Anita


On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 2:24 PM, Peter Rauch <peterar at berkeley.edu> wrote:

> It would seem that a "scientific" specimen's value today would depend
> greatly not only on the cost of a field collecting trip, but also on the
> very potential of being able to collect "equivalent" (whatever that means)
> genetic samples, which may be not only time period dependent (specimens
> sampled from populations of 50/100/200 years ago), but also locality
> dependent (locality/habitat conditions that no longer exists).
>
> Such variational representation that those specimens lost from our
> scientific collections has become so much more meaningful (detectable,
> analyzable, interpretable, valuable) with today's scientific knowledge and
> understanding. One can not simply buy more of the same specimens with the
> price of a field trip.
>
> How would those lost or significantly altered situations affect the
> replacement (if that is what it is to be called) valuation of lost
> specimens ?
>
> Peter
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 7:36 PM, Brown, Matthew A <matthewbrown at utexas.edu
> > wrote:
>
>> Dear list,
>>
>> We've recently been in discussions with the University's Risk Assessment
>> office about their annual (?) policy update. I know that when they visited
>> last about five years ago, we gave them a ballpark of $1-1.5k cost of
>> replacement per specimen for our paleontological collections. In this
>> recent conversation, they sent a section from the Fine Arts policy stating
>> more or less that loss of "archeological" objects will only be paid out at
>> fair market value, not cost of replacement from the field. I've let them
>> know that as scientific collections, they don't have commercial value, and
>> that the only way we could rebuild a similar collection is through field
>> work. Risk Management is checking with the insurance company for
>> clarification, and I'm asking for input from the community to find out how
>> other institutions handle this issue. We've been round on this with customs
>> declaration values before, but I can't think of a resource for this
>> particular issue.
>>
>> Any advice would be appreciated.
>>
>> With thanks,
>>
>>
>> Matthew A. Brown, M.Sc.
>> Head of Collections, Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory
>> Lecturer, Department of Geological Sciences
>> Jackson School of Geosciences
>> The University of Texas at Austin
>> R7600, Austin, TX 78758
>> Office:(512)232-5515
>> matthewbrown at utexas.edu
>> jsg.utexas.edu/vpl
>> _______________________________________________
>> Nhcoll-l mailing list
>> Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
>> http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/nhcoll-l
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
>> Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose
>> mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
>> natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to
>> society. See http://www.spnhc.org for membership information.
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nhcoll-l mailing list
> Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
> http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/nhcoll-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
> Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose
> mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
> natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to
> society. See http://www.spnhc.org for membership information.
>
>


-- 
__________
Anita F. Cholewa, Ph.D.
Curator of the UM Herbarium (MIN)
   and Acting Curator of Lichens
J.F. Bell Museum of Natural History
University of Minnesota
1445 Gortner Ave
ST PAUL MN 55108-1095

campus mail code: 6022
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20140728/5513b1c2/attachment.html