FIFTY YEARS OF MUSEUM WORK 



41 



elusion that the writer long ago reached, that the museum can not 

 profitably engage in commercial work. 



It is, or should be, I feel, one of the services of the museum to 

 science and to the public to meet the first cost of such things as relief 

 maps, restorations, and reproductions of fossils and antiquities, and then 

 to arrange to place them on the market, so to speak, through other 

 parties. There is a large amount of work of the above character, the 

 cost of which would prohibit its execution on a commercial basis. To 

 make, for example, an accurate relief map, demands time, knowledge 

 and skill, all in amounts not usually at the command of private individ- 

 uals, so the average relief map, made to sell, is too often of an inferior 

 quality. The museum can not make and sell such things profitably, 

 even for exchange, but it can bear the initial expense and thus be help- 

 ful to everyone. 



The question of spare room is another sore point with large mu- 

 seums, and I know of at least one director who sees red and feels murder- 

 ous every time, and the times are numerous, that he is asked to let some 

 one have a room for private work. "Surely," says the applicant, "there 

 must be a vacant room or two in your great institution." But there 

 isn't — not even in the U. S. National Museum, which is better off as 

 regards office and storage room than any other institution in the world. 

 Few seem to realize that the larger a museum the wider the scope of the 

 work and the ramification of its plans, and these may involve the occupa- 

 tion and use of every available room for years in advance. 



So) too, with taking up some new line of work — always a temptation 

 — each new undertaking calls not only for men but for money, time and 

 room, almost invariably much more of these than estimated, especially 

 in the matter of time. And each new venture must take something from 

 work already in hand, make demands upon the time of a fully occupied 

 staff, and call for space already full to overflowing. 



Thus is it that many a museum not only can not do the things that 

 are expected, or desired of it by others, but can not even do many things 

 that its own staff wishes done. 



The other man— or institution— has the things that we want and 

 we have what he wants, but like the help and situations columns in a 

 paper, they never get together. 



The big museum is as a rule not only willing but anxious to do more 

 than it does, but — it simply can't. 



