LA Natural History Museum's loan service

Eric of Ramshackle Solid wrote about the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Members' Loan Service.

[T]he museum offers a lending library from their collection, ranging from plexiglas encased stuffed bobcats to a canine tooth of a saber-toothed cat.

If I had run across the Black-throated Mango hummingbird at the museum, I might have walked right past in my haste to see the giant T-Rex skeleton. But at home, on my bookshelf, the exhibit receives the attention and respect it deserves.

Link

[#1 posted by JJ , June 6, 2008 2:32 PM]

Too cool.

[#2 posted by pauldrye , June 6, 2008 4:02 PM]

I'm not one for hyperbole, so I actually mean "this might be the coolest thing I've ever seen". I'm an amateur -- and cashstrapped -- appreciator of fossils and other natural history-esque things, so this...this...(insert image of Homer Simpson gargling)

I wonder if there's some way of convincing the Royal Ontario Museum here to start a similar program. Apparently they have the same problem as a lot of "prestige" institutions of some age: too many exhibits and not enough display space.

((Plots to get a pickled coelacanth or something))

[#3 posted by loreshdw , June 6, 2008 5:08 PM]

The Field Museum in Chicago has a similar loan program with some wax models that are almost 100 years old.
Harris Education Loan Program
http://fm1.fieldmuseum.org/helc/

[#4 posted by technogeek , June 6, 2008 8:15 PM]

I've purchased one or two high-quality replicas from museum shops -- including a sabertooth fang, actually, from the La Brea museum -- and am planning to get more as budget and display space allow. But the idea of being able to "check out" a real exhibit piece is indeed a nice one.

[#5 posted by Freddie Freelance , June 7, 2008 12:08 AM]

The San Diego Museum of Natural History has a program like that as well, called the "Nature to You" Loan Program. The museum maintains an online searchable database of available specimens, too:

http://www.sdnhm.org/education/naturetoyou/catalogs.html

[#6 posted by alxndr , June 7, 2008 9:35 AM]

Oberlin College Art Museum has been renting works by Dali, Picasso, Jasper Johns, and more to students for $5 a semester since the 40s.

http://www.oberlin.edu/amam/artrent.html
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/education/2007/09/21/smith.art.for.rent.WKYC