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Re: Ethics of Copies



Kevin,

Just an educated guess, but was this the Lima Locomotive Works collection?If so,
do you know if Allen County got anything about their construction equipment
product lines? (Oddly, a Lima afilliate is one of the companies represented in
the big collection in Michigan that I asked for help yesterday about !)

Best wishes,

Tom

Bunker, Kevin wrote:

> Erik & Colleagues:
>
> A variant of this predicament occured twice over between my former employer
> and 1) the Smithsonian; 2) the Allen County Museum in Ohio.
>
> Two distinctive and immense collections were in need of preservation,
> consisting of 1) rare locomotive technical drawings from a prominent domestic
> locomotive manufacturer and 2) glass plate and film negatives from a major
> railroad carbuilder. In both cases, the collections were so large as to be
> unaffordable for any institution if left whole/intact.
>
> My former employer and the two other institutions split the collections
> roughly in half. All cooperators then prepared an itemized finding aid/union
> list which was interchanged gratis. This way the public is able to research
> from the collection as a whole, and each institution gains visibility and
> promotes shared resources. Furthermore, each institution maintains its own
> reproduction permits/standards and fee schedules (which are also appended to
> the exchanged finding aids and periodically updated).
>
> To my mind, this method seems preferable than the releasing of a collection in
> whole or in part to what might be perceived as a "hostile" or competitive
> entity, however noble the  new institution's purposes might be.

> Perhaps the company town/mining museum authority could receive copies of a
> limited number of plans and historic documents for exhibition purposes, with a
> fair-use or restrictive-use covenant in place. In further exchange, the new
> museum might do well to agree to a referral program whereby your friend's
> collection is easily surveyed and accessed by researchers (perhaps by
> intermediary or other discrete means).
>
> My 2 cents worth...
>
> Kevin V. Bunker
> Student Assistant
> CA State Archives

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