Thanks to Frank Hicks, another disposition roster is now posted, this one for the Wisconsin Electric Railway Historical Society Museum.
The link is below:

I'm still looking for information for disposition rosters for other defunct museums/tourist operations. If anyone has any info, please e-mail me at: bowens@rypn.org.

Thanks,
Boyd

http://www.rypn.org/boyd/WisconsinElectricRailwayHistoricalSocietyMuseum.html
bowens@rypn.org

I was impressed that someone had made up a list of museum equipment, and where it went when the museum went out of existance. What bothers me is the dispostiion of equipment from an ongoing museum that does fit in with the Museum's stated purpose. By that, I mean dispostitions from the collection of the Museum of Transport. Items of road building and construction equipment were sent off the property. I can't think of any equipment that has had a greater impact on present day society than what created the road system that we use today. Trains, are nice, and I love trains. But, I use the roads every day. And, I am a volunteer at the Museum of Transport. I said that the equipment that was being eliminated was important. However, my thoughts were not considered. I know that the equipment that was eliminated was in some cases deteriorating. I and the other volunteers would have gotten to them eventually. It would have been sooner if someone at the Museum had expressed an interest in preserving the items disposed of. Does this type of dispostion happen at other museums?

jim1522@aol.com

Does this type of dispostion happen at
> other museums?

The process of removing an item from a museum collection for transfer or sale somewhere else is called deaccessioning. (Actually I should take a step back--museums can dispose of general or utility property like any other business; it's only removing collections items that is deaccessioning).

Used wisely, deaccessioning is an important tool for museum collections management, allowing a collection to stay focussed, and freeing resources for the maintentance of the remaining items. AAM and ARM both have recommended procedures governing deaccessioning. ARM's recommendations include the following:

" A deaccessioning policy recognizing the museum's trust responsibility is to be developed in advance, for removing items accessioned into the permanent collections. (Note: Objects not accessioned into the museum's permanent collections do not need to go through a formal deaccessioning process.) Whenever possible, and consistent with the museum's fiduciary responsibility, the museum should dispose of deaccessioned objects to other museums, historical organizations, or similar education institutions, and by means of gift, trade, or sale, in that order. The policy addresses:

a. Use of funds generated from deaccessionings, restricting such use to acquisition of additional objects or care of museum collections.

b. The conditions which must be present for deaccessioning to be considered, including such concerns as non-relevance to mission, poor condition, duplication, or lack of authenticity

c. Any conditions or restrictions stated in original deed of gift. If possible, the donor of an object should be notified of any deaccessioning decisions made regarding an item he or she has donated, purchased for, or otherwise made available to the museum

d. Conditions by which members of the museum, its governing body, or staff must abide in order to receive any deaccessioned object."

I was under the impression that MOT has such policies in place.


eledbetter@rypn.org

I assume that you are asking about other rail museums. I was at Travel Town Museum recently and they have removed a number of rire trucks too an LA area museum that is fire related. And they had an airplane or two and they went away but I did not get where they went to.

At the Western Railway Museum it takes a full majority vote of the Board to remove a piece of rolling stock. And in most cases so far they items have gone to another museum. For example a streetcar from Canada went back to a Canadian museum.

ted_miles@nps.gov

Ted and especially Erik-
An excellent discussion, and a wonderful job of explanation by Erik of how deaccessioning is supposed to work. The fact of the matter is that, IMHO, deaccessioning does not happen enough in this field. This does not mean that I think that it should not be a HIGHLY though-over and regulated process. There are still many museums (and not just rail-related), however, who have become nothing but glorified junks yards or trash-dumps because very little thought process was given to WHAT should be the focus of the collection.

The most important thing that a museum can have (besides its staff and volunteers) is a MISSION STATEMENT. In our case, it defines everything that we do and every decision that we make when it comes to accessioning or deaccessioning. I quite literarily use it every day, whether it be a little old lady dropping of her husband's nautical papers (as yesterday) or the potential purchase of a steam traction engine built in our fair city. Likewise, the same process is used for deaccessioning. It is a needed and useful way of keeping your collection relevant. Any deaccessioning here at the museum goes through a multi-level discussion including myself, our director, and most important, our collection committee and our board. The process can be abused, but not if check-and-balances are in place.

TJ

Port Huron Museum
tjgaffney@phmuseum.org