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.

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. 

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. 

An Introduction to The Small Museum Toolkit: Book 5, Interpretation: Education, Programs, and Exhibits

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.

As visitors are drawn into a museum, it is the job of that museum to interpret the artifacts in its collections, telling their stories, revealing their meaning, and clarifying their relevance to its audi­ence. Book 5 of The Small Museum Toolkit explores ways of doing this that will truly engage and challenge the visitor.

In chapter 1, Stephen G. Hague and Laura C. Keim discuss the im­portance of committing to “audience-centered interpretation” (1) and then drawing upon the expertise of scholars, staff members, and many segments of the community to formulate an interpretive plan based on the museum’s best resources. Hague and Keim stress the importance of selecting clear interpretive themes. They emphasize that whereas tour guides were once the sole interpret­ers dealing with the public, other staff members and volunteers now have roles to play, as do new technologies. All interpreters must be well versed in the interpretive plan and able to execute it. Periodic evaluation helps. The authors use often amusing texts to illustrate their points.

Madeline C. Flagler writes in chapter 2 about the task of interpret­ing difficult issues. She describes her own experiences working at the Bellamy Mansion Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina, and the Mission Houses Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. These museums presented opportunities to deal with subjects like slavery and marginalization in an ethical, honest, and effective manner. Flagler details each museum’s methods. Each had a goal to become inclusive in regard to staff, subject, and community. A related aspect of interpretation is covered by Teresa Goforth in chapter 3. She provides guidance in conducting research that will help find the truth about artifacts—what they are, how they were made, how they were used, and what they meant to the individu­als who created them. She urges using primary and secondary sources—diaries and letters, photos, county histories, public documents, and oral histories—to establish and understand the context of objects.

Chapter 4, by Eugene Dillenburg and Janice Klein, presents a blueprint for creating exhibits, from planning to building. After defining what an exhibit is, the authors tell how to pick an exhibit topic, a target audience, and a main message. They offer tips for developing content, organizing the exhibit, preparing labels, and mounting the exhibit. The final chapter of book 5 addresses program management. Rebecca Martin gives important details to consider in program planning, audience identification, goal setting, scheduling, and site selection. She provides samples of a confirmation letter and a contract that can be used when engag­ing presenters. She includes a list of supplies needed to run a program and advises on setting a budget and identifying fund­ing sources. Martin’s program management checklist hits all the important points covered in her chapter.

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. 

An Introduction to The Small Museum Toolkit: Book 4, Reaching and Responding to the Audience

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.

If a museum is well funded, well staffed, well organized, and well managed within its walls, what’s missing? For one thing, an audience. All of the aforementioned qualities should be directed toward serving the museum audience. This book tells in broad terms how a museum can attract and serve its constituents.

Chapter 1 takes on a basic subject: how a museum can let people know about its collections and its programs. Kara Edie stresses that marketing and communication are important parts of a mu­seum’s long-range plan. After identifying a museum’s audience and analyzing its own marketing methods, the staff can build on that knowledge. Edie advises establishing a “brand identity” and using it as the basis for a strategic marketing plan. Advertising via radio, television, and social media is important in making contact with the public, and she describes how to use these outlets eco­nomically. The newly established relationships must be nurtured, Edie says, which can be done through ongoing communication, notably a newsletter. Once the visitors come through the doors and even return for another look, it’s helpful to collect informa­tion about them so a museum can be sure of its strengths and shortcomings. In chapter 2 Stacy Klingler and Conny Graft write about visitor studies and evaluation. They tell of ways to convince staff and board members that this data collection is worthwhile, and they outline ways to assemble such data. They advise zeroing in on a particular project and then defining desired outcomes, finding the target audience, deciding what you hope to learn, and drafting survey questions. A large portion of Klingler and Graft’s chapter is devoted to a helpful discussion of the pros and cons of various means of data collecting, such as surveys, focus groups, and direct observation.

Chapter 3 centers on ways a museum can be a good neighbor through service to its larger audience, the surrounding com­munity. Barbara B. Walden cites the Kirtland Temple, in Kirtland, Ohio, as an example of a small museum that was able to garner support for and from the wider community while using its own re­sources to meet the needs of that community. The temple was the centerpiece of a substantial nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints community. Modern residents of Kirtland viewed the building as a historical remnant that mattered little to them, even though the temple received National Register recognition in 1977 and drew visitors from around the world. After the reputation of temple and town was sullied in the late 1980s due to an unrelated tragedy, staff of the Kirtland Temple worked with townspeople to correct unwarranted negative perceptions of the temple and the neigh­boring community, enabling their building to become a symbol of strength and unity. Walden tells how this amazing turnaround was accomplished.

In chapter 4, Kat Burkhart writes about ways of making museums accessible to all. She addresses the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and how small museums can comply. She thoughtfully describes why accessibility is important and how it can relate to a museum’s mission. Burkhart recommends that a museum perform an accessibility audit and notes areas that must be included. Small museums may feel they don’t have the resources to accommodate a diverse audience, but Burkhart shows that they can welcome many, including blind or low-vision visitors and those who are deaf or have some hearing loss. At the end of her chapter, Burkhart offers checklists, references, and other materi­als that will help open the small institution to everyone.

Tamara Hemmerlein writes in chapter 5 about good visitor service. As she says, “It is the interaction between the visitors and the site that creates meaning and makes our sites relevant” (121). Hem­merlein believes that good service depends partly on knowing your visitors, and she mulls over why people choose to visit muse­ums. She concentrates on the ins and outs of visitor service train­ing and provides a checklist for improvements in this endeavor. Two of her textboxes detail both problematic and successful visi­tor scenarios. Hemmerlein asserts that with training and thought, good visitor services will become second nature for everyone in the museum. In chapter 6 Candace Tangorra Matelic writes about new roles for small museums. She notes that museums are trans­forming themselves to become more relevant to their communi­ties, and she tells exactly why such change is desirable. Matelic gives examples of five different history organizations that used community engagement effectively to change their operations in an inspirational manner. She investigates the components of community engagement and supplies a helpful table that lists what it is and is not. Another table supplements her extensive discussion of nine steps toward community engagement.

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.

Today’s Mission Statement

In our society communities are not static but fluid and ever changing. People come and go, populations become more diverse—and there are increasing numbers of organizations and institutions they can use or affiliate with. As communities grow, change, and develop, people living within the loose association of geographical boundaries of the community become more vocal about their needs. And we in the museum and historical organization field are bombarded by often contradictory—and sometimes unreasonable—expectations from our communities. 

How can we as organizations navigate in constantly changing times and with constantly changing communities, keeping in mind that in the end our communities, our audiences, may not be restricted by geography at all but rather by interest, or, in the case of the ubiquitous tourist, by the general desire to learn about things, or, in the case of the school child and education community by curriculum requirements and standardized testing. Such a navigation system cannot depend on professional standards or best practices mandated or sanctioned by professional or industry-wide associations; they must come instead from special and distinctive qualities, unique to each individual organization.

Almost 20 years ago Harold wrote in the January/February, 1993 issue of Museum News:

The word ‘museum’ has lost its power to adequately define a coherent body of institutions that have similar missions, goals, and strategies. To define a major research driven natural history museum, a regional science and technology center, an encyclopedic art museum, and a local volunteer-run historical society as a ‘museum’ is like describing General Motors, Kmart, a regional bank, and a local convenience store as a ‘business’--accurate but not helpful.

In the world of the future, every individual institution, including museums, must be judged on its distinctive ability to provide value to society in a way that builds on unique institutional strengths and serves unique community needs.

The only rule that will apply to all museums is that there are no rules that apply to all museums (with the exception of the most basic and technical rules for keeping track of money and collections). The high ground of object-centered transcendence, of a canon of authoritative knowledge, of codified and concise professional standards to train and guide all museum operations has lost its power to shape and control.

If this observation is correct it means that each individual museum or historical organization is going to have to make its own distinctive way in the world.

We suggest that the best gyroscope for setting the distinctive course of any organization is a clear Mission. A good Mission establishes the distinctiveness and importance of what the organization does and its value to the communities it serves. In the world of the 21^st century the key question being asked of every organization is, “What is the value proposition?” A good mission statement is the answer to that question.

Harold and Susan Skramstad are internationally recognized museum planning consultants. Harold Skramstad served for over fifteen years President of Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village.  Prior to that, he served as Director of the Chicago Historical Society, and, prior to that, in several senior administrative posts at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Susan Skramstad served as the Vice Chancellor for Institutional Advancement at the University of Michigan’s Dearborn Campus. They have served a wide variety of clients both in the United States and abroad in the planning of new museums as well as providing strategic, interpretive, and fundraising planning services to existing museums. Their work has been recognized at the highest levels. In 1992 Harold Skramstad received the Charles Frankel Prize (now renamed the National Humanities Medal) from President George H. W. Bush for his achievement in bringing the humanities to a broad public audience. In 1994 President Clinton appointed him to the National Council on the Humanities. During his term on the Council he served as the Chairman of the Public Programs Committee.  In 2002 President George W. Bush appointed him to the Presidential Commission to establish an action plan for a new National Museum of African American History and Culture.

An Introduction to The Small Museum Toolkit: Book 3, Organizational Management

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.

While money matters, money isn’t everything. A museum may be well funded, but if it is not organized and well managed it will en­counter many problems. The contributors to this book delve into several areas that require astute management in a museum.

In chapter 1, Claudia J. Nicholson likens a museum’s building to an important artifact; it must be cared for and made safe and secure for the collections, staff, and visitors. She discusses policies that help to achieve such security. Part of this involves obtaining proper insurance, and Nicholson writes about the types of insurance that are recommended in a museum. Another aspect of ensuring security is the generation of income. Renting out the museum facility is sometimes a good way to accomplish this. Nicholson lists considerations that will help a museum evaluate whether this is a desirable move.

The remaining chapters of book 3 are devoted to management of the people inside the museum building. Patricia Anne Murphy writes in chapter 2 about human resource administration. She covers policies and procedures that will enable the small history organization to build and manage a great administrative team. She tells what a personnel manual should contain and shows how to write meaningful job descriptions for both paid staff and vol­unteers. Murphy gives tips on evaluating job applicants and then providing an environment in which employees and volunteers can flourish. In chapter 3, Patricia L. Miller concentrates on the importance of volunteers, who make a museum’s programs possible. While a board member is the most important of volunteers, she writes, many other types of volunteers are needed, including nontraditional ones such as youth, families, and even distance volunteers, who may help via the Internet from their homes. Miller tells how to recruit, train, nurture, evaluate, and recognize volunteers. She advises about the legal and ethical con­cerns of dealing with volunteers, and even covers how a volunteer may be let go, if that should prove necessary.

Chapter 4 concerns the ways interns can assist a history organi­zation. Amanda Wesselmann provides valuable information on establishing an internship program. After defining internships and discussing the characteristics of interns, who are usually undergraduate or graduate students, she gives specific steps for recruiting and managing interns. Unpaid internships are increas­ing in the corporate world, but they have been commonplace for small museums. However, Wesselmann suggests creative ways that interns can be compensated, including through course credit. A good internship program should mutually benefit the intern and the organization, and the author suggests meaningful projects to accomplish this. She also recommends intern evalua­tion and feedback.

In the final chapter of book 3, Eileen McHugh ties together many sources that can be organized to ensure a small museum’s survival, especially in times of dwindling financial resources. Collaboration with other organizations—for example, nearby museums, libraries, human service organizations, business as­sociations, schools, and fraternal organizations—is the key. After a museum examines its own strengths it can create a successful partnership program with realistic goals. In the end, all collabora­tive partners can learn much from evaluating the project. McHugh gives details of two successful real-life collaborative programs that can guide others.

Book 3 concludes with three appendixes that relate to several of the foregoing chapters. Appendix A presents an application for employment; appendix B is a sample application rating form for museum education and tour coordinator candidates; and appen­dix C is an employee evaluation form.

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.