We too have a clear policy about donations to our museum.
1. We explain the policy to the donor and any of their family
that is present.  If they continue to agree that we are the
proper repository, we allow them to leave it with us while we
begin the paper trail to accessioning.
2. we send them a "thank you " letter in duplicate which
contains a section at the bottom restating that their donation is
an unequivical gift that becomes the property of our museum to be
used as we see best. Another line for the date.  They send 1 copy
back here and keep the other.  (We keep all those on file, of
course, in case some grandchild comes along someday, hasn't heard
of the donor's wishes and wants it back.)
3. once we have "clear" title to the objects, then we allow our
collections staff to go through the objects and decided how best
to use anything that we feel fits into our mission statement.
These are then accessioned and catalogued.
4. Objects deemed unsuitable for our mission are offered to our
Education Dept. for use in their programs where visitors can
"touch and feel".

5. If that is not an appropriate use of the "rejected" objects or
the staff feels that these objects could be  of better use placed
with another museum, we call and offer to long term loan, swap,
trade or outright donate onward to that museum.
6. We do not feel that it is appropriate to sell any items which
we have accepted as a donation thus we either work with the
original donor to break up the collection and see that the
objects go to the best suited institution or we handle it later
as outlined in step #5.

Good luck,
Carole DeFord
Collections Manager
Cranbrook Institute  of Science




______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Artifact Disposition
Author:  Museum discussion list <[log in to unmask]> at CEC-INTERNET
Date:    11/20/96 10:38 AM


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.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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/
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -