Dear all

I firstly must disagree with Patty's statement that there are no shells on
display in the Australian Museum - there are indeed several shells on
display including some live ones in a mock up of some central Australian
artesian springs. However, for many years what has been on display is quite
small. When I can first remember going to the museum approximately 25 years
ago there were a number of shells including cowries and cones etc, but
given the size of the Australian fauna it was a very poor representation
(especially when you consider that nearly every species of Australian bird
is still on display).

However, Eduardo's  comments about the Bishop Museum's plight should be
better put into perspective and I will use my knowledge of the Australian
Museum to illustrate some of the problems that are not easily overcome.

Firstly the Australian Museum's collections are probably close to, if not,
the largest in the southern hemisphere, (with over 1.5 million lots both
wet and dry) with a strong emphasis on the marine Indo-Pacific fauna, as
well as large collections of land and freshwater material mainly from
Australia. This collection is generally not open for any one to just walk
in and have a look. But if you have a genuine reason for wanting to come
and have a look then usually this will be done especially if staff are
available etc. (Several of the people on this list have visited the museum
and ones I can think of off the top of my head include Emilio Garcia, Kim
Hustell, Bret Raines and Henk H. Dijkstra)

But the number of permanent staff in the department is relatively small and
the work load involved in managing such a large collection is quite
considerable and there really are not enough hours in the day for the staff
to be even remotely completely up to date with everything that comes into
the museum each year. Let alone what has been coming in over the last half
a century in particular.

Add to this the number of loan requests the department gets and fulfills,
starting the mammoth task of computerising the collections which has
centered on New South Wales as this is what the department has received
funding for in the most recent past. Computerising the museum's ever
growing type collection which is small when compared to the British Museum
or the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, but the largest in
Australia (not including the more than 120 new species that Winston Ponder,
me and one or two others will have published in the next 18 months or so).

On top of this the museum's financial state is not good to say the least.
And this causes problems when the department comes to purchasing things
like glassware, cabinets, books and journals, computers, microscopes and
the need for space to house temporary staff, visiting scientists and
students and the ever growing collection etc.

So I don't tend to agree fully when people say that they should be allowed
in because their taxes are paying for the museum etc because more and more
often this is not completely true.

To give an example of how bad funding from the state government can be :

For most of the more than 150 years the Australian Museum has existed it
never charged an admission fee. However, a number of years ago the state
government of the time said to the museum look we can not afford to give
you any more money and so we are going to cut your budget by $250,000 odd,
but because you had some large number of visitors through your doors we
think that if you charged them a fee of several dollars you will be able to
make up your funding gap. And in addition to that we will assume you are
going to charge an admission fee and have cut your budget for the following
year by a further $300,000. In the first year the museum charged an
admission fee,  attendance dropped by over 60% and now almost 8? years
later the attendance levels have not reached the pre admission fee
attendance levels.

However, even though the museum is in desperate times it's staff still
manage to help make it one of the leading scientific institutions in the
country, especially the number of papers produced pro rata is amongst the
highest in the country.

Stephanie

(Gee I must have lots of spare time, two replies in a week this must be a
record of me)


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Stephanie A. Clark

Invertebrate Identification
Unit 4/17 Morris Street
PO Box 418
Summer Hill, NSW 2130
Australia

phone  61 (02) 9799 5689  fax  61 (02) 9799 5610  mobile  0412 372388
email [log in to unmask]