>Date:    Wed, 15 Apr 1998 14:55:08 -0500
>From:    "Andrew K. Rindsberg" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Museum tragedies (was "leg. revisited",  but this thread has gone
>far off track)
 
>In the last three decades, we have seen natural history museums turning
>from an emphasis on collections to an emphasis on tourism. We see museums
>displaying a few objects (sometimes in depth) where many were shown before.
 
This is very true and disturbing trend.  I grew up on the south side of
Chicago and my first exposure to world biodiversity was through the
exhibits at the Field Museum of Natural History (the real FMNH) where the
"old school" type of displays were found in abundance.  All of this
touchy-feely kind of stuff should be relegated to nature centers and
interpretive centers in forest preserves and leave museums to show all of
the stuff in unfettered glory.  An excellent essay was done on this subject
by Steven Gould a few years ago after a recent trip to a museum in Dublin.
 
>......I do recognize that collections are relatively unimportant to most
>museums these days. Theoretically, one could run a successful museum using
>only travelling exhibits!
 
Painting with a rather wide brush it seems to me.  While "most" collections
in museums may currently be looked upon as part of a bygone era, some of
the blame must lie with "ivory tower" curators that fail to articulate the
importance and relevance of collections to solving current environmental
problems.
 
>And some should consciously and proudly maintain the standards of the past
>by not changing every
>exhibit to match changing fads in design. As a historian as well as a
>paleontologist, I have gained great pleasure in seeing "fossil fossil
>exhibits" that have been maintained as they were decades ago, to better
>understand what people saw and enjoyed many years ago. And some museums
>should emphasize collections and curators rather than exhibits and
>third-quarter profits.
 
Here. Here.
 
>What do you think of current trends in exhibit design?
 
Like electronic only journals, books, etc., they Suc....stink.
 
Are they interesting--or tragic?
 
None of the above.
 
>that the public is better served by having a few, very large regional
>collections of mollusks, or a lot of little ones?
 
The number of collections is less important than the degree to which they
are maintained and ACTIVELY curated.  Depositing specimens in a large well
known institution is no guarantee that they will be well curated, only that
they will likely be around for years to come.  While not naming names, many
purport to be "computerized' but use some sort of truncated-field mumbo
jumbo that renders the real data associated with the specimen as
unrecognizable to the computer generated "new label".  Large museums cannot
be expected to be completely up-to-date on nomenclature with repect to all
groups (it would take one hell of staff to pull that off), but they need to
make sure that the information retreival system that is used doesn't cause
more problems that it fixes.  For all of you now computerizing your
personal collections, stay far away from most abbreviations and spell out
the data so there is no ambiguity as to who legged, detted, or whatevered
each specimen.  Avoid fixed-field databases that force one to try and cram
the data to fit the field.  But I digress.
 
>Date:    Wed, 15 Apr 1998 17:16:53 -0400
>From:    Philip Poland <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Museum Tragedies
>
>I don't like the trend.
>I remember a local historical museum that had an attic-like collection of
>tens of thousands of artifacts. It wasn't explained or presented in a way
>to conform to current interests or social proprieties. A visitor could
>imagine and speculate. It was uncensored. An environment like this
>encourages science.  It is now a sparse and GUIDED tour.
 
Sad indeed.
 
>Date:    Wed, 15 Apr 1998 17:51:39 EDT
>From:    Unio <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Museum tragedies
>
>Politics in all spectrums is business as usual in Alabama.
 
Smile when you say that boy.
 
>I did not intend to give the impression the Florida Museum of Natural History
>had labeled their specimens as collected by John Doe.  I used the brackets and
>"John Doe" simply to refer to a collector in general.  When the collector was
>known, the FMNH labels bear his/her name.  If the collector is unknown, that
>field is simply left blank.  I apologize for any confusion my journalistic
>liberties may have caused.
 
Doug Shelton has mistakenly used the acromym of the Field Museum of Natural
History (FMNH) when referring to the Florida Museum of Natural History,
(formerly the Florida State Museum) whose acronym has usually been
expressed as UF or UF-FSU.
 
Kevin S. Cummings
Illinois Natural History Survey
607 E. Peabody Drive
Champaign, IL 61820
217/333-1623
[log in to unmask]
http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/cbd/collections/mollusk.html