Conservation issue - shrink-wrapped manual

[jwsmobile]

On 1/6/2016 5:42 PM, William Donzelli wrote:
> The proper term is "deaccession".
>
> --
> Will
>
> On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 7:49 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
>>      > From: Ian S. King
>>
>>      > Implicit in the "involved in museums" domain: artifacts come in, they
>>      > don't go back out except on loan. :-)
>>
>> What, you've never heard of 'de-acquisitioning'? (Boy, that one sure wins the
>> George Orwell Memorial NewSpeak award...)
>>
>>          Noel
I think the condition issue applies if the artifact has some collectors 
value.  The museums will document how an artifact gets to them and 
though they probably don't want bugs crawling out of holes in the item, 
if it fits their collection at all they'll take it. Also the prior 
ownership / use might be of interest, so that will mean it probably 
isn't shrink wrapped.

Collectors of comics and books and such as baseball trading cards value 
the condition but I don't think such as chipped edges, folds, original 
shrink wrap matters that much.  If it was shrink wrapped and in some 
nice convenient cover or such then I'd want the copy with the cover, but 
shrink wrapped wouldn't matter much to me.

Evan makes the point of checking the artifact too, which you can't do 
with a shrink wrapped item.

The shrink wrap plastic may eventually deteriorate if you have the wrong 
stuff, so that might be a reason to unwrap it too.

Thanks
jim