My institution has been recording source information for its holdings
for decades, but we are now considering that we should also record
certain instances of when we do not accept offered items into our
collection.  I'm not talking about every time someone telephones to see
if we're interested in a Roman lamp, Navaho rug, or some other such
thing that obviously does not meet our mandate, but rather for the items
that we do take in for presentation to our Accession Committee, conduct
research on it, and is ultimately not accepted for the collection
(whether for lack of provenance, poor condition, duplication in the
collection, or whatever).  This would be useful for when people come the
the museum 20 years later asking to see items they think their family
members have donated (this has happened to us on several occasions); we
would then have documentation to say that while the objects were offered
to the museum, they were returned to the donor on such-and-such date for
such-and-such reasons.

Does anyone else currently do this?  If so, how do you document it (do
you have evaluation forms for all your potential acquisitions? Do you
file these records with your regular source files, or do you maintain a
separate file system for these cases?).

Thanks!





------------------------------------------------------------
Tim McShane, Assistant--Cultural History
Medicine Hat Museum and Art Gallery
1302 Bomford Crescent S.W.
Medicine Hat, AB   T1A 5E6
(403) 502-8587

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