Well, the cynical part of me asks: Why in [bleeping] heck would you donate anything that said museum would ever have any desire to sell or trade?

I've seen both sides of this equation. I've had to write up an acknowledgment of donation of, among other things, the 241st copy of Beebe & Clegg's "High Iron," the 261st copy of Don Ball's "America's Colorful Railroads," and the seventy-eighth copy of that coffee-table book of overseas railroading photos we've seen at our library. Okay, I exaggerate, but only slightly. And then the folks donate said copies "in memory of" other past members of the museum. Would you care to tell me what, as a cataloger, I'm supposed to do? We're already gracious enough, by default of our joint partnership, to keep two of every book we get. You want me to accord your copy special treatment just because it graced your presence? Burning some of these books for heat might be a more deserving fate, in some cases.

I'm as honest as they come. I tell donors that if they donate copies of Jane's Fighting Ships or books on military aircraft to a rail library, we're not even going to take the trouble to call up the maritime/aviation museum to ask if they want them--they just go to the auction house. (Just yesterday, I engaged in this VERY discussion with my "superiors" at the Md. Rail Heritage Library. I wanted to call the maritime museum; I lost.) If you're going to be enough of an a** to demand that "my collection is sacred, and you must maintain all the British locomotive nameplates along with the Colorado & Southern memorabilia at the Colorado RR Museum,", I'm going to be bold enough to say "fine; the British nameplates mean nothing to us; we'll just get the C&S stuff from the estates of the folks who buy it at your estate auction."

And by the way, that is not a hypothetical example. I know of at least one major rail museum that has in its collections a small set of artifacts as bizarre as, say, a set of builders plates from New Zealand in the North Carolina Transportation Museum. They never should have gotten there in the first place, but thanks to their past acceptance and the bureaucracy now in place, it would take an act of several Gods in unison to deaccesion these plates to a more deserving home. So they can't do it, and they languish in the proverbial attic--presumably forever, sadly.

I don't care HOW valuable you perceive your "donation" to be. The fact remains that you're also making us liable for the custodianship of said photo/book/trolley/locomotive/sign. FOR ALL TIME. There are times when we just may have to say "it just isn't worth it." Remember the discussion about Reading 2101/AFT 1 and how Ross Rowland conceded that some kind of endowment should have been granted along with the loco for future maintenance? Extend that mentality to every slide, every timetable, every LP record, every railroad logo patch, and every caboose you own.

Okay, I'll hit right back then...
Why in [bleeping] heck would you accept anything that your museum would never have any desire to keep, especially knowing this when it's handed over to you?
I know plenty of museums who turn away items they know they have enough of or don't fall in their scope of the collection. Why doesn't yours?

I see your point about want to see your donated items displayed. It should also be noted that Museums can serve as research facilities. In that case, items preserved and stored safely will be around (hopefully with a record of provenance.) Long after the 30 years. OUr museum's policy states that if we go bust, our collections will go to another institution of like mission and interest, maybe for at least another 30 years not to be lost, stolen or melted in a collector's house fire.

Museum ethics espoused by the American Association of Museums considers the sale of collection items for money to pay operating bills to be unethical. Money from the sale of any collection is to go for 1) obtaining something more appropriate or in better condition for the mission of the museum or 2) for the betterment of the balance of the collection (like improved facilities).

Now this is not to say that all items donated to a museum may be retained in the collection. By example, imagine that you give a 1910 typewriter to a museum that already has one in its permanent collection and one in its utility or teaching collection. The museum will likely examine and compare the three typewriters. If your typewriter is unique, or different it may be added to the permanent collection. If your typewriter is the same but in better condition that the one in the permanent collection it will likely be kept and the existing one either moved to the teaching collection or deaccesioned. If it is not better it may be compared with the one in the teaching collection, etc. Only after these comparisons and evaluations are made will the typewriter be added to the collection. If one of the three typewriters is not to be kept then there are several options.

Museum ethics also direct that when an accession artifact is disposed it should first be offered to a more appropriate museum by mission statement or location; this may be gift, trade or sale. Only after exploring all options of finding another museum home for the artifact should the sale to a private individual be considered -- and that individual should not be a member of the staff or governing board or donor of the museum.

Many railroad museum -- and undoubtedly other kinds of museums -- are often given books, trade and fan magazines and the like by donors or families. These museums reserve the ability to determine which of these they want to keep to fill out their collections. And they upfront tell the donors that if it is a duplicate they reserve the right to sell it as a fund raiser to provide funds to maintain the existing collection, etc.

A museum that says it is never going to get rid of an item that is donated to it is doing itself a disservice. If it can only keep one of an item and one in better condition is offered, what is it to do?

Technically, they're never "accepted" in the first place. In EVERY case such as this that I'm aware of, the donors (almost always NRHS or museum members) are FULLY aware that we consign surplus to sale at either train shows or the same auction house used for decades by the NRHS HQs in Philly--and they're perfectly OK with that. Yes, we use that as a fundraiser--and from those monies, we can afford such things as archival photo sleeves, slide storage cabinets, shelving, acid-free binders/boxes, dehumidifiers, and the like. We even subdivide the surplus--railroad stuff for the NRHS side, streetcar stuff for the museum side (and some of that ends up in the museum gift shop).

Bluntly put, we're usually doing the folks a massive favor as well. Typically they're selling the house and moving to a retirement community or hospice; they want their collections to go to "good homes" rather than the trash or some random book store, and they want the joint library project to have the proceeds from the sales of surplus.

In the past two weeks, I've processed for shelving exceedingly rare books on western short lines such as the California Western and Yosemite Valley (and helped Brother Johnson on this forum with photos of CW M-100, ex-Morehead & North Fork), Butler's book on the Louisiana sugar plantation railroads (did you want me to look up anything on Louisiana?), Fetters' book on logging railroads of South Carolina , and most of that massive ten-volume set by Nimke on the Rutland and other Vermont lines.

Furthermore, I try as often as I can to compare our surplus to the inventory of the National NRHS library in Philly. I have two boxes of books they supposedly don't have awaiting transfer up there. Only one problem: Due to the closure of the NRHS Philly HQs for relocation, the whole library is going into storage in Connecticut for an indeterminate period. So where else are you going to go, aside from Sacramento and Chattanooga? We remain open 10-4 every Wednesday and by appointment on weekends when the Baltimore Streetcar Museum is open/manned.

Having seen our local antique machinery club's collection policy, or lack thereof, in action. I know they won't be getting anything from me. One board meeting they simply walked through the place taking spot votes on items, and selling stuff to a board member if they wanted it, making a list of stuff to auction and stuff to scrap....all without any input from the general membership.

I have a list made up of people (that I trust) to call in event of my passing who will help my heirs get the best deal for my "junk"....

There is a small town railroad station museum that I visited several years ago that must be the poster child for displaying whatever was given them without any discretion or attempt to interpret for the area. There were items in the collection from railroads on the other side of the country, unidentified photos, non-railroad related items. Just about none of it was interpreted, or grouped in any logical way, and it was as cluttered as a Victorian drawing room.

I'm guessing that they may in fact have the policy stated by the one poster of, "never giving up anything donated to them". This place really could use some expert volunteer conservator help. Would be a great project for a thesis by a grad student in museum studies. I'm not going to out them directly to rag on them, but they are located in S. Central PA on an active railroad line owned by a Class I. The town gets a significant amount of day-trip tourists and antique shoppers. If anyone is interested in knowing the name of the town, PM me and I'll share it with you.

Old Pueblo Trolley-Motor Bus Division and the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum have established policies that are observed when assessing items offered for donation or acquisition. For SATM, the items must be related to transportation in the southern Arizona region. For the Motor Bus Division, the motor bus must fall into one of two categories. The specific bus must have documentation operation by an Arizona transit agency or represent a type of coach that operated in Arizona, of which no documented survivors are known to exist.

As for my own collection, certain items such as those related to the Western and Atlantic Railroad will go to specific state institutions that maintain dedicated research facilities. My purpose is the transfer of knowledge to future generations and that it be done in a democratic manner for any who have the interest to learn.

Frankly, in terms of my photographic collection over the past 50 years, I will be doing the museum community a favor by asking my survivors to order a debris box and dumping it all therein. Maybe my Bodie and Benton pass deserves better, as well as a few other items, but whatever the historic value of the bulk of my collection, the value is more than offset by the challenges of cataloging and archiving it.

A further consideration here is the sheer volume of "railfan" pictures taken over the past 50 years.

I visited the CSRM library one time to look for some stuff. It was an interesting experience. You can divide the photo archives into two parts. The older black and white stuff was interesting and the prints were easy to file and to review. Then in the 1950's most everything shifted to tiny little slides, the volume of pictures expanded exponentially, and the results are hard to see and hard to file.

My suggestion to folks with slide collections is if you really think you have anything of historic value, get it scanned, put it on archival CD's, and make record prints. The original slides are an good archival backup, but the digitized version will make the photographic record far more accessible and valuable.

I would be interested in the opinion of any museum archivists regarding my above remarks.

John West

I am not a museum archivist, but I agree with John West completely. If your concern is being able to FIND things in support of research, you can do that much more quickly using a well planned electronic archive than you can by going through hundreds of Logan slide file boxes or thousands of slides in sleeves or yellow boxes in file cabinets. This is not just true of slides, it applies to paper documents as well. The best thing I ever did in support of my writing projects was to invest a couple years of spare time work in putting much of my document connection in PDF format. It allows me to instantly bring up relevant documents on the computer while I am working on a manuscript. This makes my current use of time much more efficient by eliminating the need to stop and search for things.

But if you are going to invest the time and effort in an electronic archive, you also need to consider having a working backup for that archive, something that updates regularly and does not require the time and effort of manually burning lots of disks. I have found that this is pretty easy to do by setting up a local network between several computers, and you do not have to be a computer expert to install a router and the required software. There is excellent software out there that will allow you to do an overnight backup of the complete contents of drives between two computers over a network.

Regarding slides and photography, there is a vast volume of "railfan" photography out there that was taken since the 1970s, mostly of common subjects at readily accessible places, that will never get into print. There is also a very small volume of photography of places with difficult or restricted access, often taken by industry "insiders", that is very rare. That kind of work is often overlooked because it does not fit the railfan "pretty picture" concept of the hobby. It is that kind of rare photography that is likely to have considerably greater historic and research value, provided it makes in into a secure archive.

I realize this has wandered off topic, but the concerns are worth a discussion of their own.

PC

Paul; Maybe it is a historic museum that happens to be in an old railroad station as ours (PTHT) is. We have mostly railroad artifacts but we also have many historic artifacts interspersed with them. We are in the process of planning to move an old SOHIO tank to our property for that historic display.

Later!
Mr. Ed

There are archive discussion lists, where issues of resouces needed to catalog come up regularly...

Its a big issue. Prior to WWII photography was expensive, which limited its use, so limited the number of images which have landed at various libraries and archives. "Cheap" color photography of the 50's and 60's mean that those of us active then probably have thousands of images, some of interest, many not. Someone has to view each, describe it, catalog it, and store it...

Today with digital people are taking thousands of images a day.

When the "stuff" is accepted at an archive they accept the responsibility to catalog it in a way that makes it retriveable. Archives can make estimates on a cost per image... it can be staggering. As a result many facilities are requesting a donation to accompany a collection to make the cataloging possible.

The other issues becomes a research problem. I can read a year of a 19th century newspaper in about 3 hours. I can look at every 19th century photo of a given railroad in a few hours... If we catalog every railroad photo taken in a given year by the members of this board it could take weeks to view them all... the sound to noise ration would be unreal.

One personal solution. My wife and children have been shown a couple of boxes which are special. They have tags on the boxes which say so... they are to go to a museum... the rest they can give away or sell as appropriate, and they understand that the museum they are given to may sell them and use the proceeds for collection support... Having realistic expectations eliminates some future problems...

Mr. Ed;

I really can't remember for sure if the name of the museum reflects just railroads or the town in general, but there is "stuff" there that really has nothing to do with either. The lack of captions or descriptions for a lot of it is also a big problem.

PC is right about the incredible volume of images from the boom times of what Jim Boyd called "steam's second life", or something like that. Being one of those "industry insiders", I can tell you that most of what I have shot that the average fan can't get will not see the light of day until I leave/retire from railroading. I keep telling myself I've got one heck of a cataloging job for my sunset years (ever wonder what Philly looks like from the High Line?). I hope I get to do it.

No kidding Paul. Several friends of mine who had tremendous industry "insider" collections have passed away before making it to retirement and the families "cashed and trashed" their collections rather than trying to keep them together. In each case, materials that could have supported a number of magazine articles or books either went to the dump or were scattered all over the world via eBay. It is very frustrating sometimes to see this kind of thing happen.

Then there is the other side of the photography issue: Anybody who thinks that their shot taken amid 75 almost identical views of a photo run-by on a fantrip is some priceless gem of photography better be prepared to outlive everybody else who was there before they can take it to the bank.

PC

Brian,

You have made several good points.

i work in a park that is run by the NPS which has some of the most conservative policys that there are.
Only recently has it been decided that they can de-acession to other non-profits.

We sent a couple of US Navy bells to the Navy Historical center. But we are still looking for some one to give a home to our popcorn wagon. The popcorn museum already has the model and does not want a second one.

The Library takes books of all kinds; but every donar has to sign an agreement that allows duplicate and out of fieel books to be sold for the benifit of the library collection.

No museum should be required to keep that artifact forever. Something better, or more historic may come along.

I get calls every week to which I reply the XXX museum will be better for your gift. We all need to educate the public better about the4 regional nature of our museums. You will not find Pennsylvania Railroad artifacts in Sacramento and conversly you will not find Central Pacific railroad artifacts in Strasburg.

We have 1849 Gold Rush items in San Francisco but not at the Mariners Museum in Viirginia. They display the history of the Chesapeake Bay.

Railroad equipment is a major part of rail and trolley museum. A number of times two and sometimes three museums have gotten together to improve their collections. Current examples of this are being reported in this thread. This is the way it should.

For those who do not feel that museums are a proper home for what you have collected; then you better start educating your family or else you should expect to find your pride and joy in the dump after you are gone.

One more thing, I think that all but the newest rail museums have the mass market magazines like TRAINS in their library. But if you have limited circulation publications from Fallen Flag rail lines please go to the trouble of finding them a good home where they will be appreciated (see above for the right region) These items are always rare.

Does anybody have a volume of the 1927 Electric Railway Journal? Please send me a personal e-mail!

And the Orange Empire Railroad Museum is looking for the Pacific Electric house magazine. Can you help?

Ted Miles