Re: Museums and historians....let's hear from you

Any museum should provide you with a copy of their collections/archives policy and their mission statement and goals if you request them.
In Portola, we do go through duplicate items, but I am unaware of any time we have thrown things away. They are typically offered to other museums first. Other museums do the same, then offer the material to members or auction them on eBay for revenue.
I'm amazed at what might be helpful sometimes. I acquired the engineering dept. ledgers and fuel consumption logs for the Virginia and Truckee many years ago (you don't want to know how cheap!) and there were scraps of paper inside. Turns out they were dimensions and capacities for all the steam engines. What looked worthless was actually valuable.
I allowed NSRM to duplicate the books and will likely donate them and the misc. scraps inside to NSRM in the future.