San Diego Museum’s Public Taxidermy Loan Program

The San Diego Natural History Museum operates a “Nature to You” loan library that allows members of the public to check out taxidermied animals, fossils and other natural-history objects much like library books. Borrowers select items from metal shelves, place them on carts, and are “checked out” by staff. Late fees are modest ($2 per day), and the museum reports no thefts in its 21-year history.

The Guardian

The loan program grew out of a 1920s initiative that supplied “nature cabinets” to local schools. In the early 2000s the museum expanded access to anyone interested, creating the only U.S. museum collection of its kind open to the general public. A spokesperson for the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian described the San Diego model as “certainly intriguing,” noting its rarity among American institutions.

The Guardian

• Total taxidermy collection: roughly 1,400 specimens.

The Guardian

• Membership in the past year: 186 individuals.

The Guardian

• Items borrowed in that period: 3,807 specimens.

The Guardian

• Membership composition: ~60 % schoolteachers, ~30 % nonprofit or community educators, ~10 % private artists, families or hobbyists.

The Guardian

• Acquisition cost example: a coyote specimen can cost about $5,000.

The Guardian

Haylie Priest, manager of the loan program, explains that the service is “grocery style,” with carts for easy transport, and emphasizes that the loaned specimens carry limited scientific data, making them less valuable for research. Elizabeth Merritt, a trends expert at the American Alliance of Museums, situates the program within a broader “distributed museum” movement that began around 2014, paralleling the rise of the sharing economy. Museum executive Eowyn Bates notes that the library is not a revenue source; fundraising and donations support new acquisitions, and the museum occasionally accepts privately donated specimens after vetting.

The Guardian

• “There are lots of kinds of natural history specimens that are incredibly common, and quite often natural history museums will have a bucket of them around.” — Elizabeth Merritt, a trends expert at the American Alliance of Museums

The Guardian

• “She was like: ‘It was so fun! Because my workers were always thinking, what is she going to pick out next?’” — Haylie Priest

The Guardian

• “I was blown away with how many specimens that they offered to check out,” — Monica Demetry

The Guardian