Balancing Resources and Collections Needs: I. Acquisition and Accession of Invertebrate Fossils

Abstract

ALL MUSEUMS have limited resources, and all acquisitions use some of these resources, whether they be space, money, staff time or materials. When museums purchase collections objects, some “costs” are evident up front, and there are frequently mechanisms in place at a high level to monitor that use of museum resources. For example, in art museums this is often a committee of the board of directors empowered to approve or deny curatorial proposals for major (i.e., expensive) acquisitions. However when the object is “free,” as in most invertebrate paleontology collections where material is either donated or collected in the field by museum staff, the cost of acquiring the object is essentially hidden. Some acquisition costs may be fixed regardless of the size or nature of the acquisition, and some vary depending the amount of space the material will require, or the amount of cleaning or conservation needed.