Wednesday, December 26, 2012

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

Wishing you the happiest of holidays and thank you for all the good work you did in 2012!  Now it's time to rest, catch up with friends and family, and re-charge your batteries for an even better 2013.

And thank you for reading this blog and for buying the Small Museum Toolkit!  It's our hope it will find its way on a shelf in every small museum in America.  Yep, we're big dreamers, but we want the Toolkit to help you make your job a bit easier.  We designed it with you in mind! 

Interested in writing for the Small Museum Toolkit blog?  We need authors who work in the small museum trenches each week and are willing to share helpful hints and solutions with your colleagues.  If interested, email us cclegutko [at] yahoo.com or stacy.klingler [at] gmail.com.

For now, we're signing off for 2012...look for more posts in January 2013 and more conference appearances throughout the year.

Warm wishes,
Cinnamon and Stacy


*The brackets are a subsitute for the @ sign to prevent spammers, so please use the correct email convention if you email us!

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Budgets and Funding Interpretive Planning

Let's face it:  planning is an area where small museums are apt to skimp on the budget.  There is always something seemingly more important to be done with vital and scarce resources. All museums worry about money, and in an era of tightened belts smaller museums may worry more than others.  

This does not diminish the importance of interpretive planning.  Rather, it forces us to be creative with how we do it.  

Before setting out on this process, compile a budget. This should factor in money that will likely be spent (and there will be some of this) but perhaps even more importantly be clear about the time and energy that will be expended.  Remember to include costs of your staff and volunteers; good planning and training will take their time as well as money, and this should be quantified in some way.  

For budgets the following may apply to your list of possible expenditures:
-Staff
-Consultants
-Travel
-Meals/Subsistence
-Telecommunications (telephone, website, blogs)
-Marketing/Publicity
-Related programming (i.e. pilot programs)
-Printing
-Supplies and Materials
-Administrative overhead 

As with all things the range of costs are variable. Interpretive planning projects, especially when well-conceived, are compelling and can attract outside funding. If grants or other funding are available that is great, but the process does not need to be costly. More elaborate processes can cost tens of thousands.  With creativity they can be done for far less, and excellent projects can be undertaken for a few hundred dollars.

For many small museums, an expenditure of time and energy on the part of a committed group of volunteers may be easier than spending cash. Find ways to recruit volunteers: perhaps local teachers or an art historian from a local college.  Secure donations for printing.  Few organizations are as imaginative in this regard as small museums.   

If you are committed to this process and willing to be creative to see it through, then the budget can be scaled accordingly. A community concert done on a shoestring budget can be just as rewarding and enjoyable as a big-city symphony orchestra. 

Stephen G. Hague is currently the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain Ernest Cook Trust Research Student at Linacre College, University of Oxford, England. His research interests center on architecture, material culture, and social history in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. Previously he worked as executive director of Stenton, a historic house museum in Phila- delphia administered by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He holds a master’s in history from the University of Virginia and a bachelor’s from Binghamton University.

Laura C. Keim is curator of Stenton and Wyck, two house museums located in historic Germantown, as well as a lecturer in historic interiors at Philadelphia University. A graduate of the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, she holds a preservation degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s in art history from Smith College. She has published widely on early American material culture and coauthored Stenton’s interpretive plan.




Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Evaluation Seems Scary

Evaluation can be intimidating. It is feedback on what you are doing, and who wants to find out that they’re doing a bad job? Evaluation might remind you of being graded in school or performance evaluations at work that affect your job security. If you depend largely on volunteers, you may be afraid that evaluating your activities may scare your valuable human resources away. And this may be true if the people in your group are unwilling or unable to change. There is no point to evaluating what you do if you aren’t willing to act on what you find.

But take heart! Most people who care about what they do would like to do it better. Most people would like to see more people spending more time enjoying your museum and all it has to offer. And although we can frequently make improvement through internal conversations about what worked and what didn’t, ultimately everything we do – from caring for collections to raising money and from researching a newsletter article to hosting a visiting speaker – we do for the public, for our audience. What they think must matter if we are going to do a good job of serving them. Finding out what they think shouldn’t be an afterthought.

If you take the time to explain your plans for evaluation to paid and unpaid staff and the board in this way, you are more likely to get their cooperation in collecting information and their willingness to implement change based on what you learn from that information.

You might introduce your evaluation plans to those who will be affected in a small group and make the following items part of your meeting:

·      Ask people to share past evaluation experiences – either positive or negative.

·      Acknowledge that evaluation can feel a little scary or like a waste of time.

·      Explain how you intend to report on and use the information (to make global
      changes, not to pick on anyone in particular).

·      Remind them that this is a learning process for you, too, and that the first
      attempts won’t be perfect and that you’ll need their feedback.

·      Most important, let them know it is not a performance appraisal.

Conny Graft is a consultant in interpretive planning and evaluation for museums, parks, and other nonprofit organizations. Conny retired from The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in 2010 where she worked for 27 years as Director of Interpretive Planning, Director of Interpretive Education and Manager of Research and Evaluation. Before coming to Colonial Williamsburg, Conny worked for the Division of Historic Preservation in Fairfax, Virginia and was in charge of planning programs for four historic sites.

Stacy Klingler currently serves local history organizations as the Assistant Director of Local History Services at the Indiana Historical Society. She began her career in museums as the assistant director of two small museums, before becoming director of the Putnam County Museum in Greencastle, Ind. She chairs the AASLH's Small Museums Committee (2008-2012) and attended the Seminar for Historical Administration in 2006. While she lives in the history field, her passion is encouraging a love of learning in any environment.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

How to Be a Facilitator

Leading the strategic planning process as the director of a small museum is challenging enough, but if there are no funds available for hiring an outside facilitator, the director has an even greater role in the process.  Keeping in mind what the role of a facilitator truly is, the director can comfortably wear the hat of plan coordinator AND facilitator. 

What is Facilitation?

Very simply put, facilitation is helping a group accomplish its goals. There are a wide range of perspectives about the ideal nature and values of facilitation, much as there are a wide range of perspectives about the ideal nature and values of leadership. For example, some facilitators may believe that facilitation should always be highly democratic in nature and that anything other than democratic is not facilitation at all. Others believe that facilitation can be quite directive, particularly depending on the particular stage of development of the group.


Whatever your belief about the best type of facilitation, the practice usually is best carried out by someone who has strong knowledge and skills regarding group dynamics and processes -- these are often referred to as process skills. Effective facilitation might also involve strong knowledge and skills about the particular topic or content that the group is addressing in order to reach its goals -- these are often referred to as content skills. The argument about how much "process versus content" skills are required by facilitators in certain applications is a very constructive argument that has gone on for years.

A Facilitator Will:

-Control the meeting

-Set rules and enforce them

-Ensure participation

-Allow for flow of thought

-Keep the ball rolling

-Keep meeting on topic

-Act generally as a “non-participant”

-Be a subject matter expert

-Accurately sum up discussion

-Smile as much as possible

Hopefully this check list will help you lead your board and stakeholders toward a shared vision for your museum.  Good luck!

Working in museums for nearly 20 years, Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko has been a museum director since 2001. Cinnamon became CEO of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine in 2009. Before that, she was the director of the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where she led the organization to the National Medal for Museum Service in 2008.  Cinnamon is the co-editor of the Small Museum Toolkit from AltaMira Press.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Developing Interpretive Plans

Thoughtful planning is essential in the creation of effective interpretation.  Once your organization has accepted root and branch that interpretation is your primary focus, you are ready to move on to planning what that interpretation will be. Having done the hard background work to position your institution to interpret its collection, it is time to decide on the best ways to do that. 

A good interpretive plan offers key concepts and a structure that is designed to spin a web of connections for the visitor between what they are seeing in the museum and their own experiences and lives.  Strong connections strongly will capture the visitor’s imagination on a deep level.  Although we cannot in every instance do this explicitly, the more connections that visitors can make to the story of your museum, the more often they will want to visit and become engaged.

Interpretive Planning is a process that takes time.  First, all in the organization must be on board knowing that the plan will ultimately generate new ideas and approaches.  It can be helpful to emphasize that the plan may only codify messages that are already part of the museum’s current offerings. 

While an Interpretive Plan can be a wholesale change in how a museum approaches itself, it does not have to be.  If you do not want to lose existing stakeholders while you consider strategies for building relationships with new ones, it is helpful to think of the plan as one that will include existing messages or aspects of your interpretation you already do well.

All interpretation must rest on bedrock of good scholarship, so do involve scholars and other experts early and often.  Engage actively with scholarship, reading new material in your field regularly.  When developing interpretive planning documents, staff and volunteers should conduct their own research and build their own knowledge foundations.

At the same time, remember that you have an obligation to convey scholarship to a wide public.  Academic research should support what you do, but do not let it take over.  Although the post-modern discourse related to the “liminal space of the dining room table’s social topography” (as one scholar opaquely commented in a planning session) may sound impressive and contain some really good nuggets of academic research, you need to play the translator. 

This does not mean “dumbing down.”  Just the opposite.  You want to challenge your audience, engaging fully with difficult topics and complex ideas.  As discussed in the chapter on “Interpreting Difficult Issues,” topics related to race, ethnicity, war, violence, immigration, enslavement and class all belong in museums.  Complicated issues or problems can have great resonance for visitors.  These topics are made more tangible and meaningful when you can rely on solid, up-to-date research in crafting your interpretation. 



Stephen G. Hague is currently the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain Ernest Cook Trust Research Student at Linacre College, University of Oxford, England. His research interests center on architecture, material culture, and social history in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. Previously he worked as executive director of Stenton, a historic house museum in Phila- delphia administered by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He holds a master’s in history from the University of Virginia and a bachelor’s from Binghamton University.

Laura C. Keim is curator of Stenton and Wyck, two house museums located in historic Germantown, as well as a lecturer in historic interiors at Philadelphia University. A graduate of the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, she holds a preservation degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s in art history from Smith College. She has published widely on early American material culture and coauthored Stenton’s interpretive plan.

Monday, November 19, 2012

For the Love of the Small Museum

Why is work in small museums important? Ask any ten museum folks and you’ll probably get ten different answers. One that immediately comes to mind is my own experience—or experiences. More than anything, my love for history and my desire to work in the field was nurtured in my visits to small museums.


I grew up Stuart, a small town in southeast Florida about 100 miles north of Miami. In Stuart I didn’t have access to any museums. But we had one terrific museum, the Elliott Museum. The Elliott was located next to the beach and represented the collections and interests of Stuart resident Harmon Elliott as a tribute to his father Sterling, an inventor and social reformer.[1]


The museum featured themes of innovation and creativity but what always intrigued me was its historical vignettes down a hallway to the right of its entrance door. A barbershop is the one I best remember. I was, and remain, fascinated by the objects in these displays, looking at change over time without really even thinking about the concept. I remember the shoes, the cans on the shelves, and the barber pole. If allowed, I would spend hours looking closely at these exhibits. To some, they were static and boring. To me, they were fascinating and full of possibility.

This was also true down the beach at Stuart’s premier historic site, the House of Refuge—the sole remaining shipwreck life-saving station on the Atlantic coast of Florida. I remember visiting this tiny site and imagining of the life of the Keeper and the shipwrecked sailors who might’ve used its services. And what else could enthrall a young history geek than learning of a something as exciting as the site’s use in WWII as a spotter for German U-boats along the Florida coast!
 
These places were accessible to me and helped cultivate a spirit in me that encouraged an inquisitive spirit, a love for history, and a connection to my community. Small museums across the nation are doing the same thing.

Sometimes our work is crucial because it helps spark an interest in something greater than the sum of its parts. In my case, the community museums I visited as a child inspired a passion for the field of history that continues to this day. It also sparked a career.

So—to paraphrase the great Abigail Adams—“remember the history geeks” as you consider your work and the terrific resources in the Small Museum Toolkit—particularly the content in Book Four – Reaching and Responding to the Audience, Book Five – Interpretation: Education, Programs, and Exhibits, and Book Six – Stewardship: Collections and Historic Preservation. You never know what spark you are lighting.

A “history geek” since elementary school, Bob Beatty is Vice President of Programs for the American Association for State and Local History, a national history organization based in Nashville, Tennessee. Through his work at AASLH, Bob leads a variety of national committees serving the American historical community. From 1999-2007, Bob worked as Curator of Education at the Orange County Regional History Center a $35 million history museum in Orlando, Florida. Bob authored the preface to the Small Museum Toolkit.


[1] The Elliott is now led by a close colleague of mine Jenny Esler and is in the middle of a project that will result in an entirely new museum. I am not sure that it even qualifies as a small museum anymore.

 

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Successful Visitor Service Training

Some quick tips for creating a successful visitor service training program -

Plan a series of meetings with as many of the staff and volunteers as possible throughout the year. Create an open environment where meaningful interaction can take place. Because you are asking everyone to participate and give honest feedback, be sure to set up ground rules for the interactions that will occur during the meetings. State that everyone will have the opportunity to discuss ideas, that the meetings are not a forum for criticizing other staff and volunteers, but they are a way to use visitor, volunteer, and staff feedback and suggestions to improve the institution. The training sessions should be conducted with the same type of respect you would show visitors to the site. In the end, the sessions will be worth any effort that is expended on them.

Think about the interactions from both museum and visitor perspectives. Ask for participants to share experiences they have had with visitors both inside and outside of the institution. Talk about what went well and what didn’t go so well. Encourage honesty without cruelty; talk about interactions, but don’t mock visitors. Everyone needs to vent; we have all had difficult and/or odd visitors and days when we don’t really want to answer any more questions. Assure your staff and volunteers that it is okay to share their frustrations and stressful situations. Venting can lead to new ideas and solutions, but what is said should be kept confidential and as respectful as possible.
      
Good training sessions can be lengthy and mentally exhausting, but they should also be opportunities for growth and social interaction. Emphasize that the things the staff and volunteers learn can be used outside of their jobs and in their personal lives. It is important for the training sessions to be in comfortable and relaxed settings. Your staff and volunteers should receive the same type of consideration as your visitors. They won’t be able to focus on learning if they feel uncomfortable or insecure.

Tamara Hemmerlein was the director of the Montgomery County Cultural Foundation for thirteen years and the Montgomery County Historical Society for eight years. She is now the Hoosier Heritage Alliance coordinator at the Indiana Historical Society. She serves on the American Association of Muse- ums Small Museum Administrators Committee and the American Association for State and Local History Professional Development Committee. She is a Museum Assessment Program peer reviewer and a graduate of the Seminar for Historical Administration.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

A Special Kind of Leader: Small Museum Leadership Characteristics

Leadership is leadership, but an argument can be made that being the leader of a small museum requires a special set of leadership characteristics.  Leaders who excel in the small museum environment typically are:

·      Consensus builders.  They are always working with board members and a large group of volunteers with strong feelings about the organization.  The director must be able to listen and find common ground among a wide range of stakeholders.

·      Able to say yes to people when saying no to projects. Small museum leaders know when to listen; he or she can figure out and describe why someone is making an offer and steer that “why” desire to something that better fits the plan and mission.  The director also knows how to put the decision off to dampen the blow and knows how to cite the mission and strategic plan to describe how priorities may not fit.  In the end the small museum leader can say “no” gracefully.

·      Able to make the case for the museum, wherever and whenever. The director has an at-the-ready “elevator speech” and he can share at the grocery store or during a friendly card game. They often carry membership brochures in their glove box and they are always a good ambassador, even when not in total agreement.

·      Frequently changing focus and tasks during the work day. Because small museum leaders wear many hats, they will find themselves shifting from working on a grant request, to interviewing an artifact donor, to presenting at a service club luncheon, to leading a school tour, to meeting with a donor and asking for a major gift. Small museum work is not for you if you can’t be interrupted or must complete a task from start to finish. 

·      Broadly competent museum generalists.  Small museums rarely have ALL the expertise in their volunteers and staff to get every job done - the small museum leader must fill the gaps.  Whether its collections care, exhibits, marketing, facilities maintenance, small museum leaders must be willing to roll up their sleeves and make it happen.
 
We truly believe small museum leaders are special – their skills and energy levels are unrivaled.  Are there other characteristics that we should add to this list?

And, hey, the next time you talk to a small museum director, tell them how awesome they are.

Working in museums for nearly 20 years, Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko has been a museum director since 2001. Cinnamon became CEO of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine in 2009. Before that, she was the director of the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where she led the organization to the National Medal for Museum Service in 2008.

Stacy Klingler currently serves local history organizations as the Assistant Director of Local History Services at the Indiana Historical Society. She began her career in museums as the assistant director of two small museums, before becoming director of the Putnam County Museum in Greencastle, Ind. She chairs the AASLH's Small Museums Committee (2008-2012) and attended the Seminar for Historical Administration in 2006. While she lives in the history field, her passion is encouraging a love of learning in any environment.

Cinnamon and Stacy are co-editors of the Small Museum Toolkit from AltaMira Press.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

In the Company of Our Peers

“Annual meetings remind us that we are professionals among others in a field that is often not quite understood and that is sometimes poorly defined, but one that is always interesting, and sometimes really quite thrilling. We might work alone but we have so much to discuss with each other—to learn from each other.”—Carol Kammen

Salt Lake City Skyline
The best thing I’ve discovered about the history and museum field is its openness in sharing ideas, processes, and mutual support. I have always loved the energy and enthusiasm we all share for our work. And there is no better place to get that recharge than the AASLH Annual Meeting. As Carol Kammen, one of our field’s best thinkers (and most wonderful people), reflected in this column from early in my History News editorial tenure, “I liked overhearing the chatter, listening to others discuss a small point or large one, of being among people who love doing local history. There is no substitute for being amidst one’s own people.”[1]  

This year the AASLH meeting is in Salt Lake City and our theme is Crossroads: Exploring Vibrant Connections Between People and Place. The first day of each meeting is our official Small Museums Day.


As founding chair of the AASLH Small Museums Committee, Toolkit editor Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko initially proposed this idea. Her co-editor, Stacy Klingler, has carried on the tradition. This year’s program is packed with sessions that are relevant to institutions of all sizes—and we all know how much we can all learn from small museums!

The collegial attitude of our profession is true in spades within the small museum community. Representatives bring wisdom and expertise and every small museum session, luncheon, or affinity event I’ve attended has been packed. Whether they occur during or after the formal sessions, the resulting discussions always stimulate, inspire, and often spill out into the hallways.

Attending conferences like AASLH’s and the ones in your own state and region are an essential way for you to share your own experiences as well as learn from that of others. The bottom line is that no person is an island and you should never feel that you work in isolation. There is a large community of small museum professionals (paid and unpaid) that is ready and willing to lend a hand, offer a suggestion, or just listen. And more than that, you will learn the myriad ways history professionals are accomplishing the tasks and suggestions shared in the six volumes of the Small Museum Toolkit.

BUT WAIT…there’s more. We understand that often the cost of attending a conference each year can be prohibitive. For the past four years, AASLH has been offering an online conference in conjunction with our in-person meeting. We have put this program together with the small museum community in mind. For $55 ($95 for a group), AASLH members can participate in six live, interactive conference sessions, hear our Friday plenary and Awards Banquet speakers, and download podcasts of some of the other sessions.

Professional development is extremely important to our field is it not? As Carol noted, “Participating in our professional organization helps us to know what is happening, helps keep us on our toes. It is our adult education.”

And these days, programs such as the AASLH Annual Meeting and online webinars are available at the touch of a button. I hope you will join us either in person in Salt Lake City or online from the comfort of your own desktop.

Whether or not you attend the AASLH meeting onsite or online, I hope that you know there is an army of people out there ready and willing to help you fuel your professional development fire. And I hope that you are seeking and making opportunities to connect with your fellow local history and small museum soldiers.

A “history geek” since elementary school, Bob Beatty is Vice President of Programs for the American Association for State and Local History, a national history organization based in Nashville, Tennessee. Through his work at AASLH, Bob leads a variety of national committees serving the American historical community.  From 1999-2007, Bob worked as Curator of Education at the Orange County Regional History Center a $35 million history museum in Orlando, Florida.  Bob authored the preface to the Small Museum Toolkit.



[1] I count among one of my greatest blessings getting to edit Carol’s columns each quarter!

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Why are small museums great places to work?

When we’re knee deep in projects and tasks, we sometimes forget why small museum work is incredibly fulfilling and exciting.  Small Museum Toolkit co-editor, Stacy Klingler, and I developed this quick list to remind you why the work matters and possibly clarify why you feel fulfilled even when you’re more tired than you’ve ever imagined. 

Small museums provide you with:
·         The opportunity to be a leader.
Not everyone can be at the top and if you’ve wanted to spread your leadership wings and see how they fit, tackling the leadership of a small museum is a great place to start.  You may be surrounded by volunteers and board members helping to lift the heavy loads so you can afford to try out your leadership style.  This is especially a great leadership opportunity for younger professionals and folks new to the field. 
·         A variety of work.
No day is alike in a small museum.  And, rarely is there a dull moment.  If you bore easily or are prone to multi-tasking (and maybe a little hyperactivity!), small museum work can keep you energized.  Plus, you can get your hands dirty in a variety of ways – collections care, fundraising, construction projects, volunteer management and more – making you a museum generalist.  You’ll be supremely qualified to move into your next job because you’ve “seen it all!”
·         The opportunity to develop new expertise.
Have you wanted to learn more about trade and hand tools?  Membership programs?  Textile storage? The immigration story of your hometown?  The possibilities are endless and if there’s a question you’ve always wanted answered, you can spend time becoming an expert and have space to exercise your curiosity.  You can always use what you’ve found to develop an exhibit, improve the collections storage environment, or raise funds for your organization. 
·         A flexible work environment.
While being available for public visitation hours may be critical to operations, you can make a case for structuring the hours so that you can get important work done and take a vacation when needed.  With enough volunteer power, there is the potential to have flexible workdays and with a limited budget, you can explore flexible benefits if a comprehensive benefit plan is not available.  But, you need to advocate for this which will make you a stronger manager and employee.
·         A visible and tangible impact in the community.
Where else can you lead a group of school kids through a program and then at a PTO meeting the next night, you meet the mom of one of the kids?  Likely her child has not stopped talking about what she learned and how much fun she had.  You have immediate proof that your work made a difference in a child’s life.  Your impact is especially felt when wherever you go - you meet people who know who you are and what your organization has accomplished.  Your fingerprints will be on practically every project and you will feel proud.  Just don’t go to the grocery store wearing your pajamas.

Are there other reasons?  Please share with us and we’ll add your thought to our Small Museum Leadership conference sessions that we’re presenting around the country. 

Working in museums for nearly 20 years, Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko has been a museum director since 2001. Cinnamon became CEO of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine in 2009. Before that, she was the director of the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where she led the organization to the National Medal for Museum Service in 2008. She is co-editor of the recently released Small Museum Toolkit from AltaMira Press.


Wednesday, September 12, 2012

State Museum Association Conferences – For Connections and Conversations, Too!

Departing a bit from the standard Small Museum Toolkit blog format, this post includes personal reflections from one of the Toolkit co-editors, Stacy Klingler, on the importance of attending state museum association meetings.

September is state museum association month. Well, at least for me it is, as I'll be presenting at both Indiana and Illinois state museum association conferences. But it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a month to celebrate the good work that state museum associations do and to remind you to take part in your state museum association's activities.

Most state museum associations have an annual conference. I went to my first Association of Indiana Museums conference in 2003, about a year after I started working in the field. I remember distinctly the session on collections care on a shoestring, which featured aluminum foil as an inexpensive barrier layer, and a presentation by a foundation director on what makes an outstanding grant proposal. These sessions opened my eyes to the practical solutions and real life perspective on museum theory that I was just digging into. They also opened my eyes to how many really smart people were working in small museums around my state and what I could learn from them.

I'd like to say that I did a good job of making connections at this conference – getting business cards from speakers and other attendees and having interesting conversations about theory and practice – but I didn't.  I was shy and I didn't know anyone, so I kept to myself and took good notes. While I learned a lot, I missed out on the most valuable part of attending an in-person conference or workshop – networking.

Museum associations offer all sorts of services – training, newsletters, advocacy, salary surveys, preservation supplies discounts, technical assistance, site visits, and more – but the most important service they offer is access to your nearby peers. These colleagues will almost always share what has worked and what hasn't, they'll show you their storage areas (good and bad), they'll talk with you on the phone about how to manage a problematic board member, and they'll be just as enthralled with a new way to hang labels or a deal on unbleached muslin as you are.

So, even though I hope to see you in the sessions I'll be presenting in on visitor studies and jumpstarting your small museum, I'll be happier to see you swapping business cards and stories during the breaks and events.


Stacy Klingler currently serves local history organizations as the Assistant Director of Local History Services at the Indiana Historical Society. She began her career in museums as the assistant director of two small museums, before becoming director of the Putnam County Museum in Greencastle, Ind. She chairs the AASLH's Small Museums Committee (2008-2012) and attended the Seminar for Historical Administration in 2006. While she lives in the history field, her passion is encouraging a love of learning in any environment.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Know your Audience, and Yourself

Before embarking on creating an interpretive plan, or as part of the process, it is important to build in audience evaluation. This allows the museum to gain a greater understanding of the sort of themes that interest current visitors and that might potentially interest others.

This can take various forms.  Survey current visitors to assess what aspects of the museum speak to them.  Organizations like AAM and AASLH have audience evaluation programs to help museums, or you can construct your own with the help of a local firm.  Although these programs elicit responses from those who already visit or have an interest in your museum, they can give you a great deal of valuable information as you plan.

Analyzing potential audiences is also worthwhile.  If you do not have much participation from your community, conduct focus groups with local leaders, or one on one interviews asking them what sorts of connection they envision with your museum.  Consider whether some sort of recurring activity or club might suit your mission or interpretation and could meet regularly at and become affiliated with your museum.  Build partnerships with other organizations when possible as this holds the potential to broaden your reach and deepen your impact.

If you have a website (and every museum should), you should utilize this as a way of gathering data.  This might include social networking sites and other vehicles that link your museum with the connected community of cyberspace. Although this chapter does not focus on technology, it is in the best interest of every museum to utilize technology to gather, convey and share information.  

You should not only rely on feedback from audiences about what they want to see your museum talk about and do, but ask them to participate more fully in your process. Familiarize them with your site and what is special about it.  Involve them in your decision-making. Solicit their advice. Better yet, act on and incorporate their ideas.  No one likes it better than when they have a good idea and someone actually makes it a reality.   Although this can be challenging and produce unexpected results it is also a particularly vibrant way to give your museum and its message meaning.

Having said all this, museums must be wary of overextending.  Although organizations in this day and age need to be much more responsive to a public with wide-ranging interests, small museums must play to their strengths.  If you are a small science museum, collecting and interpreting works by local artists may never be on your agenda. A suggestion like this, however, might be just the sort of prompt you need to develop a program or exhibition that links these local artists with scientific themes.  It could be an innovative collaboration in the making.   Then again, it might not.  But, whatever your choice your decision-making process will be better informed knowing who you are talking to and what they want to hear.



Stephen G. Hague is currently the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain Ernest Cook Trust Research Student at Linacre College, University of Oxford, England. His research interests center on architecture, material culture, and social history in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. Previously he worked as executive director of Stenton, a historic house museum in Phila- delphia administered by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He holds a master’s in history from the University of Virginia and a bachelor’s from Binghamton University.


Laura C. Keim is curator of Stenton and Wyck, two house museums located in historic Germantown, as well as a lecturer in historic interiors at Philadelphia University. A graduate of the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, she holds a preservation degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s in art history from Smith College. She has published widely on early American material culture and coauthored Stenton’s interpretive plan. 

Thursday, August 30, 2012

An Introduction to The Small Museum Toolkit: Book 6, Stewardship: Collections and Historic Preservation


Carol Bolton Betts, editor for the Illinois Heritage Association, wrote an overview of The Small Museum Toolkit as part of the IHA’s Technical Insert series.  The IHA has graciously allowed The Small Museum Toolkit to share this introduction in seven blog posts during July and August. The posts will help you to get to know about the content of the Toolkit from an outside perspective.

Museum collections that yield artifacts for exhibits and other programs require care that conserves their physical integrity. The final volume in The Small Museum Toolkit is devoted to this topic.

In chapter 1 Scott Carrlee introduces collections care basics. He notes that every museum should have the goal of creating an envi­ronment that “promotes collections care rather than allowing pre­ventable damage to occur” (2). Carrlee divides his essay into six sections, each of which addresses a threat to collections: climate, light, pests, pollutants, human interaction, and disasters. He takes a rational approach to each section, identifying or defining the threat and discussing how it impacts collections. He briefly tells what museum staff can do about the threat and offers a checklist of preventive conservation strategies. Each section concludes with a brief segment of FAQs. This crisp manner of summarizing the basic information makes it easy to grasp each point.

Chapter 2 takes an interesting turn. In it Bruce Teeple discusses historic structures and landscapes, which relates to the idea put forth in book 3 that the museum building is an important artifact. He says that collections inside the museum may be well con­served, but a dilapidated exterior or neglected grounds will send the wrong signal to visitors. An important part of his discussion centers on the historic structure report and the drafting of an action plan for historic structures and landscapes. He tells where responsibilities lie in documenting and carrying out the conserva­tion of both building and grounds.

In chapter 3 Patricia L. Miller gives a thorough account of the principles of collections management and the techniques in­volved. As in so many museum practices, collecting begins with an organization’s purpose and mission. Miller advises creating a collections management policy and a collecting plan, the latter of which sets forth things such as collecting goals and how they will be reached. She discusses standard procedures for acquiring artifacts (or deaccessioning them when necessary) and estab­lishing ownership; how to assign numbers to objects, mark them, and catalog them; and where responsibility should be assigned for each operation. This chapter’s textbox outlining unacceptable marking methods and materials will clear up many mispercep­tions on those topics, especially in small institutions without trained staff. Chapter 4 of book 6 amplifies points discussed in the preceding chapter: why a good collections management policy (CMP) is needed, and what constitutes such a policy. At the center of Julia Clark’s discussion is a summary of key ele­ments covered in a CMP: the introduction; scope and categories of collections; acquisitions and accessions; deaccessions and disposal; loans; collections care; access and use; image use; and ethics. She also notes additional considerations, such as those warranted for special types of collections, including archaeological artifacts, objects from endangered species, items of Nazi-era provenance, and Native American human remains, grave goods, and ceremonial objects. In the end Clark advises on setting a regular schedule for review of the CMP, and revising it where needed.

Nicolette B. Meister and Jackie Hoff write in chapter 5 about col­lections planning and stewardship. Collections planning involves identifying actions that will enable a museum to accomplish its collecting goals and allocate resources to advance the museum’s mission. It encompasses analysis of existing collections; it is outcome oriented and limited to a set time period. The authors stress that maintaining intellectual control of a museum’s collec­tions is a primary purpose of collections planning. They give the components of a collection plan, provide a sample outline of such a plan, and take the reader step by step through the process of creating a plan. They also list useful tips for collections planning and stewardship aimed at small museums.

Conservation planning is the topic of the last chapter in book 6. Julie A. Reilly describes the goals of museum conservation as preserving and protecting artifacts; minimizing physical damage to collections by preventive care and conservation treatments; main­taining the significance of objects along with contextual informa­tion about them; and avoiding interference with the material state of the objects. She advises completing a conservation assessment and then selecting an assessor or conservator. The assessment should lead to the development of a long-range conservation plan and should dovetail with a condition survey, which examines objects for special conservation needs. Reilly explains how to prepare a survey form, which should contain identifying informa­tion about each artifact. Prioritizing need for treatment is next. The treatment itself marks the end of the entire process. One of Reilly’s textboxes neatly summarizes the conservation planning process.

Adapted from Carol Bolton Betts, “An Introduction to The Small Museum Toolkit,” Illinois Heritage Association, Technical Insert 177 (May-June 2012). As a volunteer, Ms. Betts has done editorial work for the Illinois Heritage Association (illinoisheritage.org) since 1982. She was an editor at the University of Illinois Press for twenty years, working primarily on books about art and architecture, film, women’s history, and subjects related to the history of Illinois. Earlier she served on the staff of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and taught art history at Villanova University and at California State University–Los Angeles.