I spoke with my administrator about this one because it is an interesting case as far as semantics and rules are considered.  He said, that because you had thrown the items in the trash, the docent could take them and do whatever he wanted to with them.  However, the problem is that he donated them in your institution's name.  My administrator said that you should probably contact the museum who received the items and inform them of the situation.  At best he can only donate those papers as a private individual and not on behalf of your museum.  Hopefully, it will only mean that the paperwork has to be changed.
 
Meredith Dunham
Curatorial Assistant
 
Virginia Beach Historic Houses
3131 Virginia Beach Blvd.
Virginia Beach, VA 23452
Phone: 757-431-4000
Fax: 757-431-3733
Email: [log in to unmask]

________________________________

From: Museum discussion list on behalf of PJE Genealogy
Sent: Tue 10/31/2006 1:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MUSEUM-L] Strange situation


This morning I was informed that one of our docents took material that we had deaccessioned and donated it to another museum. I have a copy of the donation acceptance form from the other museum and it lists our museum and museum director on the form. Neither our board nor our director had any knowledge about this, much less approved it. The materials were deaccessioned in August of 2005 because they were determined to not belong in our collection (the materials were stories and drawings from an eldery gentleman; the historical accuracy of the materials could not be verified). Because of the content of the the materials and the fact that the donor sent numerous other institutions similar materials, we decided to dispose of the materials via destruction/trash. Our docent picked the materials out of the trash before they found their way to the landfill because he felt that maybe they had some value. The reasons for deaccessioning were explained to him and he seemed to agree and was told to return the materials to the trash. Now, more than a year later, he has donated these materials, seemingly on our museum's behalf, to another museum a couple of hours away. 

I was flabbergasted when I found out and am not really sure what the repercussions are for our museum. I'm pretty confident that he did not do anything illegal (the materials were in the trash, though the trash was still inside, if that means anything). Had we known that this was going to happen we would have thorough destroyed the materials rather than just trash them, but given the amount and the fact that they were covered in duct tape (among other things) it would have taken our very small staff a lot of time. We learned our lesson there. It's just such an absurd situation that I'm not sure what to make of it. The docent definitely did not have the authority to donate the materials to another organization on our museum's behalf. How does this affect both us and the other museum? Any thoughts on this? ========================================================= Important Subscriber 

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