Dear Charles,
Several persons, like you, mentioned that museums sometimes give shells to
schools. What do the schools do with the shells? Do any have permanent display
cases? Thanks.
Glen Deuel
 
Charles Sturm wrote:
 
> 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
> *************************************************************************
>
> 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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