Gert Lindner's message inspires me to write a little about how museums used
to trade shells.

Today, we are used to the idea of museum collections being huge, much too
large for more than a tiny percentage of the collection to be exhibited at
one time. But most museums had small beginnings, and the custom in (say)
1910 was to display as much of the collection as possible, or at least one
specimen of every species.

Curators and private collectors therefore had a powerful incentive to keep
only one or two specimens of a species, and trade the others to gain
representatives of other species -- as many as possible, since this number
would be published in the annual report and remains a source of pride to
this day. This was also an effective method to increase the holdings of a
museum without taking up much space.

These Advanced Collectors would gather multitudes of desirable specimens,
either locally or on expeditions, clean and identify them, and then
distribute lists of species that were available for trade. And of course
dealers did the same thing, and there were also occasional auctions of
private collections, all with lists of shells. Some lists and labels were
handwritten, others printed. (In the case of printed shell lists, the
taxonomy of some species became confused when someone added a brief
description of a species that had only been named before on a label: These
became new species names, sometimes without the intention of the author.)

In the case of the Alabama Museum of Natural History during the 1910's, we
have old correspondence that shows a polite trading method that did not
depend on money or exact counting of specimens. Basically, the Advanced
Collectors would agree to trade whole suites of specimens from an area, the
idea being that the specimens might not be perfect, but would be the best
that each museum had to offer. The major costs were clearly those of the
collecting expeditions and of postage. To demonstrate how important such
trades were, perhaps a third of the fossil collection of the Geological
Survey of Alabama was built up by trade or donation. (It's sometimes hard to
tell which.)

Things have changed. Museums still mount expeditions, but the big museums
also grow by collecting collections, either from individuals or from smaller
museums that can no longer care for them. Some museums have arrangements to
store the study specimens that are collected by other agencies, e.g., the
Smithsonian Institution stores the collections of the U.S. Geological Survey
after the Survey paleontologists are finished with their studies.

But museums do not trade or buy specimens as much they did in 1910. Mostly,
they can't afford to buy (though I feel foolish to say this the day after
the Field Museum opened the Tyrannosaurus Sue exhibit, which cost millions).
And mostly, they can't afford the salaried time to prepare collections for
trade. Also, CITES and other restrictions are making it increasingly
hazardous for a museum even to accept donations unless their origin and date
of collection are thoroughly documented as legal. And with business managers
now in charge of museums, it might be hard to deaccess so many specimens
without giving them a 'proper' (and very time-consuming) accounting.

Which brings us inevitably back to Helmut Nisters, who must be one of the
very last of the old-time Advanced Collectors. He and his mother are
rebuilding the Tyrolean Museum's collection in the old-fashioned way, by
donation and by trading local specimens for other people's local specimens.
It seems that only volunteers could devote this much time to such a project
in today's museum world. Curious, isn't it? What used to be the cheapest and
quickest method to build a collection is now quite expensive, if one places
a reasonable value on the labor.

Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama