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by extua 716 days ago
I get the same feeling; every time a museum or archive expands its collection, it's taking on a long-term responsibility for those objects.

Put your discovered objects in a warehouse, now their survival is conditional on the continued funding of whatever institution owns the building. If the items are in fancy climate-controlled storage units, who will maintain the air conditioning and pay the electricity bill for the next ten, fifty, or a hundred years?

I'm sure people who work at archives have to think about these questions on time-scales much longer than those offered by grants or rounds of charity fundraising.