Hi there,
Not sure if this is the level of participation you have in mind, but the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon has something they call the PaleoLab.  In this "lab" visitors can watch museum workers clean up and catalog fossils, but there is also a section of the PaleoLab in which kids can mimic these activities.  Bone and shell and stone fossils are mixed in a pile together in a "beach setting" mimicking the Oregon Coast, and the kids can search through the pile for different kinds of fossils.  There is a station where they can then measure the fossils, weigh them, etc. using the same tools a museum worker or paleontologist does.  After doing this they catalog their fossils in little boxes according to what type of fossil it is, much like they do for the actual museum collections.  It's a great activity for younger visitors, around age 11 or so and younger.  They love putting on their miniature versions of lab coats and "practicing being scientists."  The only thing is, as I mentioned above, I'm not sure this is the level of visitor participation you are looking for.  While the fossils that the visitors can view the museum workers working on are part of the museum's official collection, the fossils that the kids are allowed to work with are, for one reason or another, not included in the museum's collection.  They are real fossils, but ones that are technically "useless" to the museum's collection, which is why it's O.K. for large numbers of children to handle them.  The kids just love it, though.

Hope that helps,
Jessica Hollowell
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