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Post by alamonorth on Dec 19, 2009 21:37:33 GMT -5
Probably most of us are between 55 and death and accordingly we have the problem of what to do with what we have accumulated. As wonderfully as Gary Foreman's visions of Alamo Plaza in the future are; and I still have some of Gary's material from the 1980's, we are now facing a real dilemma. What do we do with all the research and collectibles that we have. We cannot move into the future and let this past slip out of our hands. Yes we could follow John Wayne's dictum of the right to buy or sell however one choices, but this only gives future researchers the problem of once again putting together the collections that were once extant. My reason for writing this is that in the last couple of years,a major collection or two has been sliced and diced on E-bay. and another really major California collection might face the same fate. I wish I had the finances to provide a really viable solution but somehow we really need a Museum of the Alamo.
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Post by Jim Boylston on Dec 19, 2009 22:26:33 GMT -5
This problem is only going to get worse as budgets for acquisitions tighten and funding, in general, is reduced.
When I was researching the Crockett book I was amazed at how often certain items were sold and resold at auction. Sometimes museums are selling off items that don't "fit" their primary collections and hope to use the money to enhance their focus. Sometimes they're dumping pieces just to survive.
Hopefully this is cyclical.
Even donating collections to research libraries can be problematic. I recently visited the Harry Ransom Center at UT in Austin and had no idea before my visit of the costs involved in archiving and maintaining a collection, even if the material is donated. It's unbelievably expensive and work-intensive.
Jim
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Post by cantador4u on Dec 20, 2009 23:16:49 GMT -5
I would appreciate some clarification about research collections. In my little pea-brain such a collection would consist of a lot of paper in the form of hand-written notes, print outs, Xerox copies, periodicals, journals, reports, articles torn from magazines, maps, drawings, photographs, and other such stuff. It would probably have audio and or video recordings, artifacts, and other 3 dimensional things. How far off am I with this?
Without waiting for an answer I’ll just jump in and ask dumb questions.
First dumb question: Who is selling the collections, the inheritors, or the original collector? I can certainly understand inheritors selling as they have no emotional ties to the material nor subject matter, but there should be some sort of incentive for a collector to donate his/her collection rather than wait until it’s too late.
Second dumb question: If much of the material is paper based why couldn’t it be transferred to a digital format? I know this would take time, and time, as we all know means money. But once it’s available in digital format the originals can be tucked away in a smaller space and more inaccessible because researchers can access the digital materials.
Third dumb question: What about the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library at the Alamo? Wouldn’t this be a logical place for such materials to go to? I suspect that it is really too small, but why not spend the time, effort and money to develop this organization rather than develop a new organization?
Fourth dumb question: What incentive do libraries and/or museums have to accept special collections? It sounds like they are just accepting a whole lot of expense, especially if they have to make it available to the public, but that is what libraries are for. So should they charge people who use collections? Someone doing research for a book could probably use it as a business deduction. That makes it less likely that John Q. Public would use it. I can already hear cries of “elitism!”
What we need is a good open-source electronic online library that holds only digital documents, and makes them available to anyone at no cost.
Paul Meske, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
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Post by Jim Boylston on Dec 21, 2009 16:10:27 GMT -5
I'd say that's accurate.
On my most recent visit to Austin I toured the archives at the Harry Ransom Center at UT and heard a presentation about their collections. I learned a lot. Collections are acquired in all sorts of ways, sometimes by purchase, sometimes by donation. The Ransom Center does not accept every collection offered; sometimes because the offering doesn't fit their field of study, sometimes because of price, and sometimes because of the expense incurred in archiving and cataloging. Once a collection is accepted, it has to be quarantined for a time (in case of bugs, mildew, etc.), then sorted and cataloged, before it's placed into storage. Every step is expensive and work intensive, so a lot of thought has to be put into what to accept.
I guess a lot depends on the size of the collection and what preservation efforts would need to be done. Some collections might be better placed elsewhere. The Tennessee State Library and Archives, for example, has a lot of Crockett letters, so putting more of those in that location makes sense to me.
Maintaining collections can be expensive. In researching "Crockett in Congress," we weren't charged for accessing materials in the libraries, but we were charged for copies (which were often very expensive), and we were sometimes charged fees to use images of items from the collections (these fees ranged from reasonable to outrageous depending on the institution).
No argument here.
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Post by tmdreb on Dec 21, 2009 22:47:11 GMT -5
It must also be realized that a museum is not always the best/safest place for artifacts. It is not uncommon at all for private collectors to take very good care of their investments, just as it is not uncommon for museums to allow objects in their care to deteriorate or even disappear over time.
I would not attempt to slander all museums, but those who aren't familiar with the behind-the-scenes stuff at these institutions don't always know that they can vary wildly in quality.
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