IS YOUR MUSEUM A DUMPING GROUND?

All museums find it difficult to decide what to trash and what to treasure. Megan Hicks presents some suggestions on how to be discriminating in collecting for your health and medicine museum.

1. You can't collect everything
All museums have limited resources. They never have enough people, space or funds. They don't have the room and the proper facilities to store and manage all the artefacts they would like to collect, nor the resources to catalogue and display them properly. Even large state-funded museums must place limits on what they collect, and must decline many offers of donation. But in order for any health and medicine collection to be relevant, valuable and manageable, it is important that its custodians be discriminating.

So, given that you can't collect everything, how do you decide what to accept for your museum?

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IN THIS ISSUE

Is your museum a dumping ground?

President's column - Vulnerable collections

HMM membership explained

Around Australia - museums, exhibitions

Diary dates

Mystery items

Reading matter

Media clipping

Notices

Membership renewal

About HMM

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