.......including "295" from PA Railroad Museum

http://www.timesleader.com/news/ap?articleID=5663691

Although this warrants serious consideration and investigation, I would advise outsiders to think a bit before lobbing any verbal or mental accusations. The attics, archives, and cellars of museums like this, from the Smithsonian to the lowliest house museum, are usually LOADED with "artifacts" ranging from an old lunch box to a train order book to a commemorative coffee mug to boxes of magazines to a Marx toy train set to a box of used company pencils (I saw all of the above, and far more, in one archive's "what do we do with these?" box recently).

Major "professional" museums have had to become ruthlessly efficient in not only processing and accepting (or rejecting, at times) donations, but also in processing "de-accessions."

This issue has, sadly, been raised with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania before; supposedly many years ago there were supposedly major issues with staff the William Penn Museum in Harrisburg (the "state history museum") deaccessioning items for personal profit, and as a result The PHMC has some stringent, and occasionally obnoxious, restrictions upon both accession and deaccession (which is why, as has been discussed here before, they can't just send a PRR 2-8-0 to Altoona for long-term loan or permanent display, or go after PRR 2-10-0 4483.....).

Let's see what items are on the list, and then we'll talk. I've seen worse errors than this just merging two Excel spreadsheets.

And they're talking two/three thousand items out of a collection of 4.5 million pieces. That's a very small percentage. (But then again, I've never been too good at math.)

Walt Lankenau

3 thousand is about 0.06% of 4.5 million..
so you were right! very small percentage..

thats the same percentage as one missing item out of 1,500 items..

Scot

We probably lose, misplace, wear out or break a greater percentage of our tools every weekend................:)