I agree that most museum staff members rise above the temptation to
steal artifacts of any kind.  But if there is temptation to begin with,
then the problem already exists and may be hard to detect. This means
that the museum is already operating at a disadvantage.  We've all
noticed a rather alarming increase in the number of publicized cases of
internal theft, corruption or otherwise ethically questionable incidents
in museums in the last few years.  I don't know what the cause is,
except perhaps greed, arrogance, opportunity or a combination of all
three.  It may simply be a case of more incidents reaching the press.
It also speaks to the need for museums and related institutions to look
at their ethics and security policies every few years and update them
when necessary.  Many institutions become too lax with employees after a
period of time.  People forget about policies or decline to enforce them
because of the complications involved in enforcement.  It's not so much
a matter of how institutions change their policies as a matter of
regularly reviewing your policies to make sure they can effectively deal
with such incidents.  No institution will ever be able to anticipate
every unethical act its employees may undertake, but if they keep their
policies current and employ rigorous enforcement, that will help.
Limiting access, updating security systems, and continuous inventory of
collections also will help reduce risk.  Tactically placed video cameras
(or the belief that video cameras are in place) also help because it's
pretty hard to deny doing something wrong when you're on tape.  As far
as regaining the public trust, that depends on what happened, who was
involved, and if there was legal resolution.  If some kind of
institutional neglect was involved, then regaining the public trust will
be that much harder.  If the incident could not be avoided or was a rare
occurrence, then perhaps there is less to worry about and the public
will come around in time.  Effective PR on the part of the institution
will help mitigate whatever bad press may occur following a theft.  In
the case of the New York incident, we don't know enough details to know
what happened.  But it does seem rather odd that so many items could be
taken over such a long period of time without anyone noticing something
was wrong.  When someone on the outside notices the problem first, then
you know you have a real problem.  
 
Jeff Tenuth
Indiana State Museum
Indianapolis, IN
________________________________

From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Kara Lewis
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 8:52 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MUSEUM-L] New York Archivist


   I am sure some of you have heard about the New York State Library
archivist Daniel Lorello.  For those of you who have not, he is accused
of stealing more than 300-400 items from the library within a five year
period, maybe even longer.  He states that he did this to pay for
household bills, family credit card bills, home renovations and such.
If you go to the Yahoo website, you will see that this is the feature
story today.  
   This incident raises issues of ethics and public trust in our
institutions.  This is even more true for professionals who have regular
unsupervised access to the collections.  My question is how do
institutions, that go through an event such as this, change their
policies regarding collections access and regain their dignity and the
public trust?
 
 
Kara Lewis
Collections Intern
Indiana Historical Society
Indianapolis, IN

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