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Museums and Archives



Having been out-of-town, I returned to an interesting discussion
of museums and archivists.   My experience with museums that
collect archives and papers (without an archivist position) is:

1)  Each paper item takes on the persona of a museum artifact.
Each item is inventoried, numbered, etc. etc. ...   These individual
treatments futher fragment a group of materials, because museums,
like libraries, like to segregate items by type.   Thus what would have
been "Papers of Bill Smith" with five folders... become Bill Smith
Accession 2000.03.06.115, 2000.03.06.116, etc.     The organic
unit is lost is many respects.

2)  Since the paper materials are treated as individual objects,
there is often no impetus to make retention decisions.   Everything
is kept, because as separate items, each may have worth.


Dean

Dean DeBolt
University Librarian
Special Collections and West Florida Archives
John C. Pace Library
University of West Florida
11000 University Parkway
Pensacola, FL  32514-5750
Tele:  850-474-2213;   Fax:  850-474-3338

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