26 Jan
2010
26 Jan
'10
9:55 a.m.
On 1/26/10 12:10 AM, Rod Smallwood wrote:
With regard to Museums there's something they could do to help the collector
community. There's a tendency for them to accept any and every thing and
just put it into storage.
As one of the curators at the Computer History Museum, one of the people
responsible for making decisions on what to accept into the collection, I
respectfully disagree. Actually, very little of what is offered is accepted.
They only pick items to restore and display with
the widest appeal. Many exhibits are static insofar as they don't run.
Collectors in the main have very little storage but do attempt to get what
they have running.
Is it not better for the museums to loan out systems to
collectors who will get them going again and either return or keep them in
working order.
Ask a curator at the Smithsonian or the British Science Museum if you can take
one of their artifacts home to play with, and see how far you get. What you will
find out is there is a big difference between a computer club with a public
collection, and institutions following AAM guidelines.
Most computer museums do want volunteers but that
involves traveling to the
museum site to work. Worse still they tend to put technically competent
people to work cleaning floors and painting buildings.
As opposed to 'playing' with the artifacts?
Volunteers at CHM working with the collection must attend artifact training.
The first thing that they learn is even though the gear they see here is stuff
that they've used in the past, once it is accepted into the permanent collection
it has to be treated in ways to make sure it survives as long as possible
(hopefully hundreds of years). This includes not touching it with bare hands, etc.
There is absolutely no way that established museum practices would allow what
you are suggesting to occur.
I would suggest people look at the guidelines posted on the American Association of
Museums site with regards to protocols for artifact handling.