Hmmm. Thanks Dave,
The secret handshake is having a good reason for asking that puts you on a priority list with the museum, with a 'reasonable' question. These are variables, so see below.
It's not unreasonable to ask for a serial of a museum aircraft (or major 'chunk'). I'd expect that data should be available within the museum's main material, if only for accession and cataloguing purposes. (A distinction that's not been drawn so far in the listing is there's a performance difference between a private museum and a national collection. We should expect a national collection to provide such basic data without demur.)
I'd say the two extremes are that some museums, the RAF Museum for instance, provide a PDF or Word doc complete history as researched by their aircraft curators. At the other end, other museums don't like listings posted including aircraft in store, for reasons of 'security'.
The US habit of ignoring serials (in contrast to the UK 'plane-spotter's obsession with them) may be part of your problem. Likewise that more paranoid countries may have an issue with you asking such questions about ex-military equipment (our reasons don't play in certain nations) there are different cultures around the globe on this arena, as well as different standards from museum to museum in any given country. Museums make a degree of play about peer and industry standards, but frankly it's lip-service with huge failings in most institutions, sadly. 'How Bob used to do it with file cards' seems more of a driver than actual process change within organisations to back up slick web and museum frontage make-overs.
To be honest, I've usually found other (reliable) sources when I've needed to list aircraft. (I don't think the list you've given as an example would be hard to nail through this route - the nose excepted.) Bob Ogden's books on aircraft museums, as well as other listings (such as the Warbirds Directory) are often as reliable as local listings - more than numberless ones of course - but also sometimes better than official lists compiled by bored government clerks. (The Warbird Directory now on CD ROM 5th Ed only, IIRC - NOT the Warbird Registry - is the best single resource for the types covered, and corrects many single (sometimes 'authoritative') source errors.) I can't recall any time I've had a problem compiling a listing when I've needed to, but the museum is only
one avenue to the answer. However even the best compilers have issues as Bob's forwards point out - some museums
never respond to listing enquires.
Not completely incidentally, my "secret handshake" is I'm a journalist, usually enquiring for publication. It is certainly not a guaranteed entrée but it achieves a higher percentage than just being a general enquirer - or the bane of most museums lives, the private obsessive. By contacting the institution prior to publication I'm offering them the chance to get the correct details out there - the flip side to one of your earlier (correct) remarks about dud data in circulation.
There are, of course museums with replicas with original serials, composite aircraft - or aircraft with no id (the Canadian Aviation Museum's Swordfish comes to mind) as well as aircraft that certain museums would like to assure us are identity 'a' but aren't.
Then there's the people who insist in haranguing curatorial staff with why their listings / aircraft id / colour schemes / display choices (and so on...) are wrong and why they should change them right now.
So (hypothetically) if you are contacting a museum about what their aircraft ids are for no better reason than you are making a list to amaze your teddy bear, you are not in good company and not a good expenditure of time and energy from their point of view. If the data is off the shelf, then that should be an easy win, but if not (apart from the good principle reason that museums are there to educate and explain) why should they help
you?
Just some random gap filling thoughts. My top tips, are, therefore, ensure you have the other listing material available; be clear and concise and the 'phone may well work; be enquiring for good reason, such as publication, and don't have revolving, obsessive eyes like this:
Regards,
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