Replying to...Museums don't want the collections...I can speak with
limited authority.  Often they do.  There are several caveats.  The first
one is that museums must be able to handle the collection to best fit
their needs.  It is difficult to accept a collection that has to be kept
together as a whole.  If an institute has 20 or 30 separate collections
finding all the samples of one species is much more difficult than if the
museum collects all similar species of a given group and puts them
together in several drawers.  The institue has to be able to break the
collection up.  At the Carnegie I always put a card identifying the donor
in with a tray so that one knows the source of the specimens.
 
The shells may wind up in different areas of a collection.  If there is
any type material in the collection, this would be incorporated into the
institutions type collection.  Other shells may go into the general
systematic or research collection and others may be earmarked for displays
or for outreach programs to schools.
 
Do museums want our collections, Yes!~  Just make sure you are donating it
to an institution that wants it.  I do know of museums that have refused a
collection because it did not fit their needs.  Other institutes might
want it.  We just accepted such a collection.  In the past 7 years I have
worked on accessioning 4 collections donated to the museum from
collectors.  The smallest collection was about 100 lots, the largest about
1000 lots and I'm still working on it.  Being a research assoc. there may
be some fine points that I overlooked and I leave it to curators such as
Gary, Tim and Andrew to expound on any areas that I might have slighted in
this posting.
 
Charlie
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Charlie Sturm, Jr
Clinical Instructor - Family Medicine
  University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Research Associate - Section of Invertebrate Zoology
  Carnegie Museum of Natural History
 
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