An author and expert on Abraham Lincoln who spent nine years as the Lincoln Scholar at the Lincoln Museum expressed “shock and extreme disappointment” when notified Monday that the museum will close.

“I think this is a tragedy for Fort Wayne and a tragedy for the Lincoln community nationwide and worldwide,” said Gerald J. Prokopowicz, author of “Did Lincoln Own Slaves?” published in 2008. Prokopowicz was the Lincoln Scholar at the museum from 1993 until 2002. Currently he is chair of the history department at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C.

Although the foundation stated in a news release it was taking a two-pronged approach to make its Lincoln Museum collection “more accessible and visible in celebration of the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial in 2009” Prokopowicz suspects it has more to do with the foundation's “weakening commitment to Fort Wayne.”

“Closing the museum is an act of cultural vandalism by people who have no concept of the historical responsibility with which they have been entrusted,” he said in an e-mail. “It's a blow to Fort Wayne, to the worldwide community of Lincoln scholars, and to anyone with respect for and interest in our nation's greatest president.”

The foundation plans to divest the 3-D artifacts, seeking public partners to exhibit them. It also wants to digitize the documents to make the collection “more visible and accessible to a greater number of people.”

Prokopowicz isn't buying it. “The idea of digitizing the museum's documents to make them more accessible is a smokescreen,” he said. “The value of most of the museum's handwritten documents, certainly all the museum's Lincoln documents, is in their physical reality, not their words, which have all been published years ago.”

He cited as an example a calling card from 1863 on which Lincoln, who was ill at the time, wrote “I am improving but cannot meet the Cabinet today.” Digitizing that note, Prokopowicz said, is not the same thing as seeing the actual note, “where you can observe Lincoln's shaky handwriting and feel his presence in the document.”

Prokopowicz, who is on the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission Advisory Committee, added that the most valuable research of the museum is its library, with thousands of books. “Do they intend to digitize all of them, too?” he asked. “They are destroying a great research resource, and taking out another piece of whatever is left of Fort Wayne's heart.”

He did agree with one of the foundation's assertions. Officials on Monday cited a decline in schoolchildren attendance as one of the reasons for closing the museum.

Prokopowicz said fewer students are going on field trips to museums, and it's a trend that's occurring in places other than Fort Wayne. He blames it on two factors: standardized testing, which forces teachers to spend more time in the classroom, and higher gas prices.

Martin Fisher, president of Science Central, moved here a few months ago from southeastern Virginia. He saw the same trend there of declining field trips, and also blamed it on state standards and higher gas prices.

As for Science Central, Fisher said general attendance was down a little in 2007, but so far this year attendance is better than 2007.

Cheryl Piropato, education director for the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo, said zoos nationwide have seen a trend in fewer school field trips. The Children's Zoo has seen a slight decline, but has compensated by developing programs that take the animals into the classroom.

The History Center, by contrast, has seen school group attendance bloom, said Todd Maxwell Pelfrey, executive director of The History Center, just a half block from the Lincoln Museum. The museum has seen four consecutive years of record-breaking attendance. He attributes that to the Heritage Education Fund program the museum began five years ago, which allows free visitation for school groups. It's funded by donations.

Student attendance plummeted at The History Center in 2003, when Fort Wayne Community Schools revoked funding that had underwritten student programs. In the 2003-04 school year, student attendance was only about 3,000, Pelfrey said. Now student attendance ranges around 7,000 a year, and that excludes groups coming to the Festival of Gingerbread.

Lincoln Foundation officials also cited competition from other museums with more hands-on offerings as a reason for declining attendance.

Prokopowicz took issue with that. He noted that the museum has plenty of hands-on exhibits, and said when it opened in 1995, some traditionalists criticized it as being too high-tech.

Pelfrey agreed that museums are designing more hands-on exhibits. He added, “We'll miss our neighbors and our partners.” He said The History Center would be interested in some of the museum's artifacts, particularly if they have a local connection to Fort Wayne.

Prokopowicz hopes whatever happens to the collection, it stays intact. “If it is broken up and delivered into separate hands, that represents a loss to the scholarly community … and it's even a bigger loss to the community.”