[Nhcoll-l] Natural history museum controversies?

[Omega Smith]

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.

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.

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harder time finding published material on this subject than unpublished,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.

Dr. Omega Smith
acsmith777 at gmail.com
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