Open Forum

Harry,

You could leave some pre-aquisition forms that include a space for contact information at your front desk. The guests services staff could be instructed, if the curatorial staff can not be found that any donor must fill out a pre-aquisition form before leaving their object at the museum. 

All the best, 

Hi, Harry - I'm now retired, but more than one of my museums had this dreadful problem.  I agree with Jason and that's how we mitigated it.  The reception desk (gift shop/entry) had forms that were fairly simple and quick to complete.  We called them "drop and run" forms... but not publicly!  Vivian

Hi Harry,

I know this issue all too well. I use a "Temporary Custody Agreement" that the front desk staff always has on hand for just these occasions when I am not available. It records the donor's information, and then they must initial one of the following options:

1. The museum has the right to dispose of these items as it sees fit, up to and including throwing the items away.
2. If Curator is not going to keep, and donor wants the items back, donor must return within 30 days of notification from Curator to retrieve them. Failure to retrieve the items within 30 days could result in the items being disposed of by Museum.*

*In the 7 years at my last institution, I had only one donor select option 2, out of hundreds of donations. Most of the time, people are looking for the emotional burden of disposal to be taken from them. They're not throwing the item(s) away, but if someone else is, that is somehow better. 

Lastly, the donor must sign and date the form, and so must someone from the front desk staff. This way, you have a staff member that may be able to give you additional information if needed. 

Cheers,

Stephanie Gilmore

Curator

Golden History Museum & Park

Hello Harry,

I think Stephanie's solution makes a lot of sense. Our policy is actually not to hold anything pending the decision to collect and until recently we were very strict about it. If someone brings us something in person, we take pictures and capture info but don't keep the item(s) pending collections committee and board review. If the person is genuinely making the offer in good faith and not just trying to get rid of stuff, we find they are usually happy to comply with our policy, and pleased that we are so conscientious about our collecting. When someone is trying to "dump and run" and says "well I'm just going to throw it away if you don't take it right now" we say "we understand and that's your choice." This almost always calls their bluff as realistically very few people need to get rid of their item(s) right this second (and if they truly care so little about the historic value that they'll throw it away rather than be slightly inconvenienced, it's unlikely to be so mission critical to our collection that we missed out by sticking to our guns). 

I put this policy in place because our previous temporary custody receipt did not have a deadline for retrieval like Stephanie's does, and I worked in an institution with the same that had chronic non-retrieval of items which got left in legal limbo, taking up valuable space. However, we have now relaxed a bit and allow temporary custody when a donor genuinely can't keep the item(s) until review (they are from out of town or are moving, etc.), but we don't offer retrieval as an option, only the agreement that we can dispose of the items if we don't want them. A retrieval deadline might be something we could build in in the future if we want to dedicate a space to store things pending review.

I also agree with Stephanie's assessment about emotional burden, and having hoarding tendencies myself, I can understand it (for me, I think it comes from a root indecisiveness that is alleviated in a museum setting because there are established criteria for what we keep and it's not just my subjective choice). As American society wrestles with our unhealthy relationship with stuff (see https://www.activecollections.org/), I think museums could lean into being that mental heath aid for our communities. It's definitely an extra burden on us, and while my own institution is still working through a massive culling of our own mission-irrelevant martials, we're not ready to take it on yet, but perhaps in the future.

Good luck with whatever you decide to implement and thank you for the discussion prompt!

Michelle Nash

Curator of Collections

Elkhart County Historical Museum

Thankfully we don't typically open the museum in the morning to find items left at our doorstep. Our front desk people are usually good about calling myself or our Director down to do an initial examination of the items and speak with the potential donor. However, I do need to get better at pushing the Temporary Deed of Gift for when we are not available. It can be frustrating going to my office after a day off to find a pile of items and no contact information let alone a TDOG. 

I appreciate Stephanie sharing the TDOG. Ours hasn't been updated in about a decade and I have been putting off freshening it up. For example, we have the signature on the bottom of the second page instead of the first. Well, people don't always flip the page!

I applaud those with very strict policies about "dumping," and for sticking to them.  It must be pointed out, though, that "policing" this often falls to weekend, front line staff who should not, in my opinion, be placed in this position.  Therefore, I reiterate that a simple form (ONE PAGE!) capturing basic information so that collections staff can follow up will work better.  At least for small museums.