In a message dated 01-09-07 15:49:51 EDT, John Rumm wrote:

<< But where do museums draw the line between one's personal
"ready-reference" collection and an institution's own research collections?
Should museum professionals only purchase or acquire a book for themselves
when their own institution can't or won't do so itself?  Do books that museum
professionals acquire in the normal course of their duties become, de facto
or de jure, the property of the museum, if the museum does not already
possess that book as part of its own collection?  Should museum staff members
be asked to prepare and maintain a list of all the personal books in their
offices?  What steps can museums and museum staff take to avoid falling into
ethical conduct pitfalls that relate to book collecting? >>

Before this particular thread is completely forgotten among arguments about
who is or isn't a martyr or redefining the word, I wanted to add something I
forgot to include in a previous post on the above subject.  I was very
surprised to find that there would be a question about personally owned books
and whether they might represent a conflict of interest with a museum
library.  It seems to me that this would be a total non-issue for most
museums and/or libraries.  The only time there would ever be a real conflict
of interest, it seems to me, would be in the case of rare or hard-to-find,
out-of-print volumes: if you buy for yourself a rare book that your
institution needs or is actively trying to obtain, certainly that would be a
problem.  But normally, I think most museum professionals wouldn't think
twice about buying a personal copy of a book in their field, regardless of
whether or not their institution owned one.  No, I emphatically don't think a
museum professional's book, purchased with personal funds, should
automatically revert to the museum if it doesn't already have a copy!  That's
even more draconian than telling you that you can't keep any personal items
in your museum office.  And I've never heard of librarians worrying about
whether their libraries owned books that they bought for themselves.

My former boss had an exceptional personal library in our field, which I know
contained many volumes that our museum library didn't own, and I couldn't see
anything wrong with that.  His personal book budget simply exceeded the
amount of money that our museum library could afford or was willing to devote
to works in our field.  He wasn't about to let his research and scholarship
suffer because our library couldn't acquire, for example, the 19th century
journals that he needed to use, and he spent many research days curled up in
his personal library at home.  It would have been nice if he had bequeathed
his library to the museum when he died, but if he didn't, so what?

Occasionally he was able to get museum funds to purchase particularly rare
and expensive books, including 16th and 17th century volumes, which went into
the museum collection rather than into the library, and they were included in
exhibits, opened to the illustrations that we wanted to show.  As far as I
know, he had no use for these works in his personal library (they were in
Latin).  But these were exceptions.  No one ever questioned his owning 19th
and 20th century books in his field, even comparatively rare ones, and I
still see nothing wrong with this practice.

It wouldn't bother me to provide my institution with a list of personally
owned books that I keep in my office--along with an inventory of the
museum-owned books charged out to me.  I think this could be a legitimate
security measure to discourage people from appropriating the institution's
books.  After all, scholars have been known to steal books.  But the other
concerns seem misplaced to me.  Maybe I'm missing something, but I find this
hand-wringing over professional books a bit strange.  If others besides John
Rumm think it's an issue, I'd love to hear about it.

David Haberstich

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