Ideally, the policy you have should be that nothing leaves the facility
unless a formal loan agreement is issued. Your collections policy should
address to whom and under what conditions you loan items. Generally, the
borrower is liable for any damage or loss.  Too, the borrower is usually
another institution that guarantees the conditions under which the item will
be exhibited. The loan agreement should stipulate who carries the insurance
for the item.  What they want to address is: to whom and under what
circumstances do they loan material; what procedures must be followed to
borrow an item; what responsibility the borrower bears in the unfortunate
case of a visibly damaged or lost item.

I would hope that your people would be grateful that the person admitted
what happened to it.   Has the question been put to the luckless person who
misplaced the item about what s/he thinks should be done?

If they have policy that adequately addresses things leaving the grounds,
the policy they obviously need to look at is how violation of the rules
should be handled, what responsibility the borrower carries.

It looks like  you get to put together a collections policy.  If you would
like, I would be happy to share ours with you and I'm sure other listers
would have samples to contribute.

Good luck!


----- Original Message -----
From: "Kathleen Wadell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2001 3:43 PM
Subject: Re: theft policy and "walking off"


> Moving from theft to more delicate questions, what do you do when a
> volunteer or board member walks off with something?  In our case, one of
the
> board members took an irreplacable (for our shoestring little archives, at
> least) item from the collection home, and apparantly lost it.  Everyone in
> the organization is now taking sides.  Can anyone suggest a policy for
items
> leaving the collection?
>
>
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