William, Your second point was just addressed. I am excited to report to all of you that my quandary has been solved. Our museum will cover the costs to send
them to Museodata, at their request. (I love this list!) See below:
Museodata is a nonprofit Foundation based in Bogota, Colombia (South America). Although our capital is private, it is very limited. Our purpose is to support people and institutions related to Museums, Cultural
Heritage, Conservation & Restoration. (www.museodata.com)
One of our projects is to collect teaching materials, museum brochures and museum guides in order to make them available to researchers, teachers and students as well as employees of museums and heritage
centers. Therefore, it would be ideal to have your items in our collection. Although we would like to make an offer, we do not have enough budget to do so. It will be a great collaboration if you can donate your materials to our institution. In such a case,
we could only see the possibility of paying for the shipment from Milwaukee to Bogota, knowing beforehand how much it could be according with the quantity and weight of the materials.
Museodata Foundation had an International Network for museums libraries - Rembim- with an online bibliographic catalogue in which the information of your materials can be introduce and search for external
researchers. ( http://rembim.museodata.com/)
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of William Shepherd
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2016 4:55 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: question about keeping museum brochures
Dawn,
The first question would be are they considered office items or collection items? Either way I don’t see a big reason to keep them unless there
is some connection to your institution but it’ll mean they’ll be handled differently.
Three ideas came to mind while reading this. If you have a typed listing of all the institutions, maybe a job for a volunteer or student,
you could send it out over the list-serv and any interested institution can claim ones from their past.
Maybe there’s a country wide head office of an archival/museum/heritage organisation that would be interested in the collection? Finally, if they are deemed office items, lining a wall with them might
look cool.
William Shepherd
Collections Officer
Swift Current Museum
44 Robert Street West
Swift Current, Saskatchewan
S9H 4M9
Phone: 306-778-4815
Fax: 306-778-4818
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Todd Bothel
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2016 3:49 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [Spam?] Re: [MUSEUM-L] question about keeping museum brochures
Ebay
-----Original Message-----
From: Scher Thomae, Dawn <[log in to unmask]>
To: MUSEUM-L <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tue, Jan 12, 2016 5:19 pm
Subject: [MUSEUM-L] question about keeping museum brochures
Dear wise museum colleagues:
I need some perspective. I have about 400 museum brochures and museum guides from museums around the world (not this museum) in my department in vertical
file boxes taking up prime real estate. They date from about 1965 to around 1990 and most collected by three or four past curators on several trips. I am wondering if they should be archived somewhere else (on-site at our museum or off-site--suggestions for
a place?), send each museum their brochure (nostalgia?) or just ditch them. I am trying to think of a reason to keep them. No one has looked at them in the last 20 years, at least, and with everything electronic now, there is no need to keep them as information
resources (except to chuckle at some of the admission fees).
Would appreciate any suggestions.
Please contact me off-site at
[log in to unmask]
Thank you,
Dawn Scher Thomae
Curator of Anthropology Collections
Milwaukee Public Museum