>Linda -
>
>>I'm at an Aquarium, where the primary connection with the visitor is, of
>>course, the live animals.  Since for the safety of the visitors and the
>>animals very few of our animals can be touched, zoos and aquariums have
>>for many years used skins, dried specimens, bones, and the like with
>>visitors and kits for loan, as mentioned.
>>
>>But now, as more reproductions are being used instead of these biofacts,
>>are we losing something basic?
>
>Interesting question posed.  I see how an aquarium may face a bigger
>challenge to provide real stuff!  OMNH uses mnay replicas, but we use
>real objects wherever possible.  For example, an object without data, or
>one deemed replaceable (e.g, a rock sample, one of many).  I suppose you
>might use fish skulls or scales or bones?

Hi Peter~

Yeah, I saw this post. I'm not really up on whether any definitive visitor
surveys have been conducted to determine "How important is the 'real
McCoy'?" However, I operate on the assumption that it is very important -
both in terms of the quality of a visitor's experience and a sense that,
overlying everything about a museum, it is one of our prime missions to
bring the uncommonly encountered object, concept or perspective into the
lives of people who could not experience them otherwise. This is something
I unabashadely tout about the Pratt - archaic though it may look, most of
what is on display is original material.

Thoughts about an object kit: After several years of it being on the
drawing board, we will be compiling a kit of specimens (primarily fossils
and osteological material - alot easier that aquarium critters!) taken from
the collections for off-site use as well as for special in-house programs.
My goal is to use dataless, duplicated specimens as the core and to
supplement when an original is impossible, e.g., a Deinonychus claw is
incredibly informative and evocative but not really obtainable, so I'd be
OK with the polymer version. But its the real that, more often than not,
creates awe and inspires imagination. The heft of a fossil alone is capable
of drawing alot of "Wows!" and ponderings about who was this, what road did
it travel from death to in my hands, etc. So . . . I'm a stauch believer in
the real 'cause otherwise (part of me thinks), what's the point?

Cheers,
Linda



Linda L. Thomas                              voice: 413-542-2326
Curator                                        fax: 413-542-2713
Pratt Museum of Natural History             e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Amherst College
Amherst, MA  01002