Hi Rachel,
Ah yes! Sadly, this likely happens in many smaller museums, especially all-volunteer museums. Even mine, where I'm a volunteer professional (retired). In our case, lending was not prohibited, so I explained to the volunteer exhibit folks the extremely important necessity of loan paperwork, not only because of liability issues for the museum, but also the terrible PR if someone (or their heirs) thinks you have lost something they thought they loaned. Even with the best of intentions, one of the volunteers received a large groups of items saying "I'll fill out the form later." Eeeek
Anyway, in your case, it seems that if the board only put the policy in place in 2018, the volunteers are probably used to doing this. Did they know of the new policy? --if so, seems like a Board member or the president should perhaps help with communication to prevent future occurrences. For now, hopefully you can work with the volunteers to create lists of what they borrowed (this time), perhaps with help of the lender, so all agree on the list, and get it signed. Even if you don't have an actual form, that would at least get agreement on what was loaned so things can be returned.
If the displays being created can't be executed without loans, you might have to revisit the policy. OR find a way to be insure that exhibit themes not be chosen unless they can be done with items from the collection.
The key, I guess, is always education..... sometimes not easy if folks aren't very willing to learn, but once you explain the liability and PR issues it usually will start sinking in.
Lucy Sperlin
PS I had extensive experience with this issue at a former museum and would be happy to share many examples that might raise awareness! (or make your hair stand on end!)
-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rachel Whitney
Sent: Monday, August 13, 2018 8:15 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] To loan or not to loan
Sorry, I didn't fully explain the situation. When I stated that the volunteers received loaned items, I meant to say that these volunteers went around town (to people they know) and asked for items to be loaned to the museum for a certain/themed display. I had no knowledge of this or the items that they had taken from people's homes.
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