I think these are valuable words to keep in mind. No one institution can be everything to everybody. A personal anecdote from the recent past that touches on something that has been stated previously, something to the effect that we are curators of our own collections, we can not own them in perpetuity, and that our dissemination in some form of out collection when the time comes perpetuates and inspires others. A couple years ago I was visiting friends in an area I once lived and had a small nursery. This friend encouraged me to visit a nursery I had heard about that started long after I left the area. It turned out that as a high school student the proprietor had been fascinated by the plants I was growing and ended up opening his own nursery, doing in the internet age what I had had to give up on earlier, with the plants I had inspired him with. After I got over a minor bout of envy I really felt complimented, that I had inspired this young person to this path. And as time and circumstance had changed my orientation, his may too over time. I think this is probably what we should strive to do, inspire the next generation(s) to pick up where we leave off. If we don't, our collections will lack any real meaning. We must work to inform and inspire. Randy On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 1:05 PM, Paul Licht <plicht@berkeley.edu> wrote: > "our limited resources simply prevent us from being all > things to all groups." -- * * A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right. - Thomas Paine --- * *