The consensus among different disciplinary groups does support
asking for adequate documentation to evaluate requests for
destructive sampling... that seems to be the case whether its
anthropology, frozen tissues or geological cores... And as the
process results in the complete loss (usually) of a sample,
certainly the institution is justified in asking for as much as
needed to make a valid evaluation of the request.
 
The value of a policy, of course, is that the documentation
requested by the institution for evaluating requests is listed
out, so that anyone making a request is fully informed of the
institution's standards - and there can be no claims of
favoritism/politics/biases....
 
One approach many places take in evaluating requests is to have
a small committee, whose members might change depending on the
nature of the request, review the request.  The committee
should include individuals of differing perspectives (eg.,
disciplinary specialist, conservator, collection manager or
registrar) to help cover all angles of the request -- it might
even be useful to have someone not employed by the institution
review particularly unusual requests...
 
The process shouldn't be cumbersome - but it has to have enough
checks in it to be sure all issues are considered.  Again,
we're talking about permanently removing a sample of material
from a museum specimen....
 
I do have reprints of the article mentioned by Ann Pinzl in a
previous post if anyone is interested. Just let me know.
--
Paisley S. Cato, Ph.D.                          e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Curator of Collections                          phone:  703-666-8634
Virginia Museum of Natural History              fax:    703-632-6487
1001 Douglas Ave., Martinsville, VA 24112