Too many specimens, not enough people at museum
Nicky Phillips September 2, 2010
Nicky Phillips September 2, 2010
"MORE than a decade after thousands of specimens were stolen from the Australian Museum the NSW Auditor-General has criticised the current management of its collection.
A performance review found much of the museum's 18 million-piece collection, valued at more than $750 million, was not catalogued and many items could not be located by anyone but the curator or museum staff. ''[This] weakens the museum's ability to provide information on its collection. It weakens its ability to exercise effective control over the objects in its care,'' the Auditor-General, Peter Achterstraat, said. ... While the Auditor-General's report, released yesterday, did not assess the museum's security, it found it did not conduct regular inventories of its collection to ensure items still existed ... Thousands of zoological specimens were stolen from the museum by a former employee ... An Independent Commission Against Corruption investigation into the thefts, which included animal skulls, birds and a stuffed lion, found the museum's inventory was incomplete and its security and collection management practices inadequate."
Well reading this in Launceston poses a few questions. The QVMAG's last Director was at the Australian Museum and presumably knew all about this kind of problem. The QVMAG's collection are apparently worth something like $250 Million, so what security is in place there. And in what state is the QVMAG's record keeping? We should not be expecting answers to questions like that anytime soon. The elephant in the room is probably what this SMH story might be telling us. Would an Auditor-General's report on the QVMAG tell us anything that we do not want to know?
5 comments:
This is all very interesting. I think that I heard somewhere that Mr. Filmer-Sankey was somehow involved in that zoology robbery. Oh well the plot thickens and as is the way of these things the contributors to the public purse pay up big time for the failures.
No goals, no apparent strategy, inadequate records, breaches of workplace standards and bullying. What next?
Where is the community represented in this mess?
And what has the Mayor been doing all of this time?
As our well paid representative shouldn't he be directing our Council to assure that reasonable standards are being met?
If he keeps doing nothing he's going to look complicit in the entire debacle.
I overheard the new GM say that the State government will not involve themselves in this matter, hence Council is pretty safe doing what it usually does - whatever it likes.
This is all very interesting but surely the guts of it all is that the Council is too free with our money...as if we've got lots to spare.
Surely its up to the Council to act efficiently? Yet with all the waste and over management that goes on, the best they could do when their workload was reduced by $20 m per year was to put up charges!
Who is looking out for our interests?
Certainly not the Mayor, or the Council staff, they all seem to trying to see how much of our money they can spend.
Until the unaccountable dog's breakfast that is the Council, starts to act like a professional organisation, useful change at the Museum is going to be near impossible
For the thousands of specimens stolen from the Australian Museum I too think that I heard somewhere that our Mr Filmer-Sankey was around at the time. Maybe that is important but possibly it is not.Anyway it really too late to be asking about that.
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