November 29, 2008
Memento mori
The disposition of effects can give rise to all manner of dilemmas.
We received a hundred-year-old tombstone along with a collection of documents. While we do want the documents, we are not interested in the tombstone — there is no information about its background (we were told that someone found it while gardening, and we do not know the date or the address where it was found), and the name does not show up in city directories for the relevant dates, so we have no knowledge of the person. It does not fit with our collecting policy and is also very heavy — in short, we don’t want it. The question is: how does one go about properly deaccessioning a tombstone? Does anyone have any suggestions for what type of facility might be interested in a tombstone with just a name, a date, and a general location for its unearthing? If no one wants it, what is the right way to divest oneself of an unwanted tombstone?
(Posted to the Archives and Archivists List.)
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Seems like a good candidate for the library book sale. That thing would nicely prop up a pile of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.
Mike, you got a tombstone hand and a graveyard mind. Or do I mean a graveyard hand and a tombstone mind?
Well, in any event: yes, the library book sale.
I’m thinking it’s the first accession for a North American version of Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta. Find the place for the garden and shape a portion of it around the tombstone, making a ‘poem’ of it. And we’re off!
Renner, that is brilliant.
If I found a tombstone in my garden, I’d assume there would be human remains to go with it…what happened to the dead person?
“Someone” . . . “found it” . . . “while gardening” — that alone aroused my suspicions.
I’m surprised they even asked what to do with it! I would have just popped it in the car and used it in the garden! Well, used is probably a bad expression, that would imply I had a body with no headstone, placed perhaps.
I was given a human skull as a child by an uncle who was digging up a graveyard – I was at that age, I was so excited as he gave it to me but no sooner had he left I started getting very jittery about having it……anyway…..I disposed of it, I’ll say no more. For now.
Tease.
not teasing – slightly ashamed actually!