Museums, books and costs: public service vs private enterprise

摘要

Museums house a variety of resources important for the research and preparation of manuscripts and artwork for new book and journal publications. In particular, they have collections of printed library materials and specimen collections of birds. Inthis paper, I focus mainly on prepared skins as a reference material for authors and artists, since these are by far the most heavily used non-library resources, although the importance of collections of eggs, nests, skeletons and tissue samples can be considerable for certain projects.