Expensive items are kept under close watch, but millions of items and specimens don't receive the same treatment — especially insects.
Expensive items are kept under close watch, but millions of items and specimens don't receive the same treatment — especially insects.},{ "name":"Editor Picks", "component":"17242653", "insertPoint":"4", "requiredCountToDisplay":"1", "watchElement":".
“They have an obligation to keep track of those inventories,” O’Brien says. “Those collections don't belong to individuals at the museum. They belong to the citizens of Denver.” A print image could not be located by staff, either, although staff could identify where it should be. One zoological item was labeled as missing in the museum’s digital catalog, but upon inspection, staff realized it had actually been transferred to another museum in 1914.
“That internal audit found ‘problematic’ or ‘substandard’ identification levels for half of the 3,400 insect specimens surveyed — meaning the museum had only high-level scientific names for these items or none at all,” the audit describes. “All mammal and bird specimens on loan to the museum had been verified, but only thirteen loaned spider specimens out of nearly 4,900 specimens had been verified,” the audit says. “Furthermore, only about 1,400 of 25,000 — or less than 6 percent — of loaned insect specimens had been accounted for at the time.”According to the audit, DMNS lacks sufficient staff to annually audit loaned items.
“These had been assigned to twelve employees who had left their positions with the museum sometime between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2023,” the audit describes. “We could not verify whether the keys for those twelve employees had been returned to the museum, because the keys did not have unique identifiers and managers do not always collect keys when staff leave.
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