Nancy,

Thank you for your thought provoking post. Well written!

Let me see if I can better express from the 3rd person position what I was trying to communicate in my first posting.......

Because each one of us lives for only a short period of time and our working career period is so much shorter than that. We, as a
species, tend to lose sight of the long term future and tend to focus, instead, on the present and only a short distance into the
future: may be 25 or 50 or maybe even 100 years into the future. But, if one changes this "normal" future focal length and extends
it to 5000 years, ones view of the responsibility toward the preservation of the objects that we are chartered to protect takes on a
very different slant especially if the charter is to maintain in the present condition.

Over that 5000 years of time, changes due to chemicals in the environment, handling, light exposure, abrasion, natural
degradagation, to name a few of the myriad of demons will produce more noticeable changes to the object as it is now than what we
could ever see in one human work lifetime. Thus, if one is short sighted "now" regarding the protection of the objects, the rapidity
of change to those objects over the next 5000 years could render them useless as historical "documents" and negate those purposes
for which they are being protected.

In the interest of long term preservation, I believe that the preservation of each object is THE highest priority barring none and
that all other activities are second place.

This does not mean that the objects should be hidden from view nor inaccessible but it means that after the object has been
protected from potential damaging conditions THEN research and visual appreciation and all those other things that you mentioned
could take place BUT only if the object is protected from harm.

I was being very serious when I suggested a replication as they can be damaged and mistreated without harming the original. Thus
placing a replication in whose ever office will not put the original at risk. An approach using a replication is using a very
forward looking approach to preservation of the object.

Well, I hope I did better........
If not, then I'll have to engage David Harvey who is much more eloquent than I!

BTW, I think that you may have confused me with David Haberstich when you mentioned difficulties with others.

Best Regards,

Jim Moss

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