Your quotes refer to specimens/artifacts, the stuff of our museums'
collections.  My field is ornithology.  A personal bird collection (granted,
it's illegal for an individual to have a bird collection) would be unethical
due to a conflict of interest.  In fact, CM has a policy against a curator
maintaining a collection IN THEIR FIELD.  A personal library is no such
animal!

I am not competing with the museum's library for these books--the library
could purchase their own copies if they had the money.  Books are not like
specimens, where every individual is unique.  Every robin is a separate body
of information, so any "copy" I had personally would be information I was
depriving the museum of.  Every copy of a book is identical (OK, so there
are editions, if you want to be picky, but we're talking generalities here),
so my copy is purely redundant.  That's the crux of the conflict of interest
issue.  My owning collecting tools, dissecting tools, or a laptop in no way
interferes with my department buying similar or identical items.  By your
reasoning, I can't own a computer (or even pencils or paper) because we have
and use them at work.  Wrong!

The exception is when rare books are being treated as
specimens/artifacts--if I worked in a *book museum*, I could have a conflict
of interest if I collected rare manuscripts.  My museum, however, collects
natural history specimens, and its library and its computers and its pencils
and paper are research *tools*.

As for your other questions:
        Most of my books are duplicates of things in our library or are on
ancillary topics (ecology, general biology, genetics, foreign dictionaries)
that my library has little interest in.
        My books are my own, not the museum's.
        We don't have a policy of requiring an inventory, but it's probably
a good idea.  But only to avoid confusion if/when I leave here and take my
stuff with me.

Robin K Panza                         [log in to unmask]
Collection Manager, Section of Birds          ph:  412-622-3255
Carnegie Museum of Natural History       fax: 412-622-8837
4400 Forbes Ave.
Pittsburgh  PA  15213-4008  USA

-----Original Message-----
From: John Rumm [mailto:[log in to unmask]]

AAM's Curator's Code of Ethics, for example, states that curators "must
never compete with their museum for an object"; that they must "give their
institutions first option to acquire an object that they have purchased for
themselves, at the same price, before adding it to their personal
collection"; and "should not store personal collections on museum property
or do research on or have their personal collections conserved on museum
time without the permission of the institution."

Similarly, the Association of College and Research Libraries' "Standards for
Ethical Conduct for Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections
Librarians" state that "Extreme care is required whenever a librarian
collects items similar to those being acquired by the institution and some
institutions will choose to restrict or prohibit personal collecting."

But where do museums draw the line between one's personal "ready-reference"
collection and an institution's own research collections?  Should museum
professionals only purchase or acquire a book for themselves when their own
institution can't or won't do so itself?  Do books that museum professionals
acquire in the normal course of their duties become, de facto or de jure,
the property of the museum, if the museum does not already possess that book
as part of its own collection?  Should museum staff members be asked to
prepare and maintain a list of all the personal books in their offices?
What steps can museums and museum staff take to avoid falling into ethical
conduct pitfalls that relate to book collecting?

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