It may be, as one responder noted, that this has been dealt
with on the list before, but it still remains a problem for
many.  If the "donor" cares so little about the artifact
that they abandon it on the museum's door step without
documentation, why should you (we) care about it?  Or want
it in your collections, for that matter?  Make it clear to
your visitors that abandoned property is a problem for the
museum, and that you'll refuse to accept responsibility for
it.

We refuse to accept abandoned property into the collections
- this keeps it from being a deaccession problem in the
first place.  Viewed as garbage, obsolete equipment, or a
donation to your fund raising efforts, abandoned items are
much less an ethical problem.  Because we have undocumented,
abandoned property in our collections after 100 years of
operation, we got the state legislature to pass a law
allowing any museum in the state to legally take possession
of such property - to keep or discard - through public
notices and the passage of time.

If we accept a "collection," like your plow and tools
example, anticipating that we'll only want part of it, we
require the donor to sign a gift agreement which stipulates
that we may discard any or all of the collection without
further consideration of the donor's interest.  If they
won't sign, we won't take.


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C. L. Dill, Museum Director
State Historical Society of North Dakota
612 East Boulevard
Bismarck  ND  58505-0830
P: (701)328-2666
F: (701)328-3710
E:  [log in to unmask]
Visit our Web site at: http://www.state.nd.us/hist/
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