Institutional hoarding

Recently I read about a new dinosaur find. The fossils were not found in the field, they were found in the basement of a museum. The museum had gathered them long ago, put them into boxes, and then hid them away.

Another recent news article spoke of a library which had a huge storage room. A janitor got curious as to what was in a wooden box in the storage room and found a cache of silver coins which the library didn't even know they had. They aren't even sure where or when the coins came from. They were very, very old and collectible yet the library had them stuck in a wooden box in a storage room.

Museums, libraries, colleges, and other types of institutions often hoard items. Tucking them away not so much so that they can be preserved for the future but so nobody else can get them. Rare books that people should have access to are lost in the back rooms of libraries. Fossils that could further our understanding of the past are stuck in boxes in the basement, unstudied and unavailable to be studied. This is a shame because these institutions exist to spread knowledge, not hide it. And yet researchers who try to access these hidden treasures are denied access because they are "them" instead of library/museum/whatever staff.

It is a shame.