Subsidized Hazard Surveys

Through funding from the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH), BACC is pleased to offer a limited number of subsidized hazard surveys for $350. Applications are due May 31, 2012.

A hazard survey is the first step in developing an Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan that is tailored to an institution's specific needs and circumstances. Participating institutions must complete a pre-visit questionnaire and self-evaluation exercises designed to identify specific risks. Field Service staff then complete a one day, on-site hazard survey to examine the facilities and speak with museum staff. Potential vulnerabilities, such as environment, security, fire and water detection and suppression or abatement, collection management policies and procedures, and pest control, are analyzed. The result is a report that will provide observations, recommendations, and resources to better manage and mitigate risk as well as to develop an Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan. Following the survey, Field Service staff use the information gathered to assist in revising an existing emergency plan or drafting a new plan for the
organization. 

Please contact the Field Service office at wrfso@bacc.org>
wrfso@bacc.org or 619-236-9702 for an application.

Balboa Art Conservation Center (BACC)

Western Region Field Service Office

Elise Ciez

Field Service Project Manager

mailing address: PO Box 3755, San Diego, CA 92163

phone: 619-236-9702 fax: 619-236-0141

BACC website: www.bacc.org

Small Museum Scholarships for AASLH

Small Museum Scholarship Application

2012 AASLH Annual Meeting

Salt Lake City, Utah, October 3-6

DEADLINE: June 30

The American Association for State and Local History will hold its 2012 Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. This year, participants will explore the empowering, challenging and special connections between people and place. This year’s Annual Meeting, Crossroads: Exploring the Vibrant Connections Between People and Place, will examine the personal, communal, and organizational journeys that lead to vibrancy and authenticity. Learn how these journeys allow us to achieve meaningful social change and sustainability. Join us as we welcome speakers Pat Croce, Laura Thatch Ulrich, and Will Bagley and explore the theme together.

Unfortunately, many working in our nation’s small museums feel as if we can only dream of attending this meeting. In a perfect world, boards would grant every request to fund our professional development. Institutions of modest means, however, may not have the resources to help us become effective stewards of our community’s memory.

Websites, listservs, and social media constantly offer new sources of technical and psychological support, but nothing is better than the face-to-face fellowship of sharing survival strategies. Every year, increasing numbers of Annual Meeting sessions address issues specifically affecting small museums. These sessions can be as practical and wide-ranging as training, marketing, and strategic planning. Other sessions focus on creative ways to forge and re-energize relationships with the surrounding community.

Now in its seventh year, AASLH’s Small Museums Committee is offering scholarships to any AASLH members who are full-time, part-time, paid, or volunteer employees of small museums. The $500 scholarship will cover the cost of the conference registration and the Small Museums luncheon. Any remaining funds may be used to offset travel and/or lodging expenses.

To qualify, the applicant must work for a museum with a budget of $250,000 or less. They also must either be an individual AASLH member or work for an institutional member. Application forms are available at www.aaslh.org/SmallMuseums.

The deadline for applications is June 30. The committee will email award winners by July 15. For questions, please contact Bruce Teeple, Small Museum Scholarship Subcommittee Chair, at mongopawn44@hotmail.com

                                

Employment Opportunity: PA Looking for History Curators

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC), the Commonwealth’s official history agency, is seeking Museum History Curators within the Bureaus of the State Museum and Historic Sites and Museums. Museum History Curators perform work that includes assisting with collections inventories, performing basic research on artifacts/specimens, cataloging artifacts/specimens, entering
collections data into the PHMC’s collections database and reconciling inventory discrepancies. The PHMC expects to fill vacancies for a pilot project to inventory collections beginning spring, 2012.  In
order to be eligible for these positions, you must take the Pennsylvania Civil Service examination for Museum History Curator through the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania State Civil Service Commission. Pennsylvania residency requirement has been waived for these positions. The examination, instructions and additional information may be accessed directly at:
http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/http;//www.portal.state.pa.us;80/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_73945_1225164_0_0_18/2012-030_Museum_Curator,_History_1.htm

How to Create, Run and Sustain an Effective Internship Program at Your Museum

RC-MAAM and Cornerstone Workshop

How to Create, Run and Sustain an Effective Internship Program at Your Museum

March 30, 2012

9:00-3:00

Chemical Heritage Foundation

315 Chestnut St, Philadelphia, PA 19106

Interns are an integral part of how museums fulfill their mission and having an internship is a “must” for most students in order to move forward with their career goals. Seems pretty straightforward, right? Think again! There are a lot of expectations involved in the partnership between an intern and an institution.

How do you know if they are a good fit? How do you design a project that will give you and the intern the most value for your time? What do they do?  What are you required to do? Do you pay or not pay; stipend or wage? How do you get more?

 This workshop is divided into two sessions.  During the morning session, three of the largest museum studies programs will explain what they are looking for in an internship opportunity for their students.  They will also share what sorts of things are not acceptable as an internship (hint:  museum internships shouldn’t be shown on Dirty Jobs.) The afternoon session will be an introduction to two successful internship programs that can work at any museum.  The presenters will share ideas, handouts, stories, suggestions and give advice on what sorts of things have worked in their programs.  There will be time for questions and discussion to follow each session.

Lunch is on your own in the great city of Philadelphia and there are several wonderful places within walking distance and are reasonably priced.

COST:   $40 MAAM Members

                $50 Non-MAAM members

Speakers to include:

Petra T. Chu (Seton Hall), Pauline Eversmann (University of Delaware), Jacqueline R. Emerick (The George Washington University), Katie Friedland (Pennsylvania Museum of Art), Rachel Kassman (Jewish Museum of Maryland), and Jobi Zink (JMM)

To Attend this workshop please contact MAAM at their website or by phone at (202) 452-8040.

For additional information contact:  Elizabeth Alberding, Chair, RC-MAAM (240) 462-8399

From the SMA Board President: John Pentangelo

SMA Board President John Pentangelo

Now that I’m back from Ocean City I just wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on this year’s conference. First I want to thank the attendees for coming. Conference costs are as reasonable as possible so that volunteers and staff from smaller institutions can afford to attend. It speaks volumes that so many of you make this investment and take time out of your busy schedules to share new ideas for building on the success of your museums. I also want to commend the committee for a fantastic conference. I’ve been attending for six years and have never heard so many positive comments about the sessions.  The incredibly hard work that went into registering attendees, organizing speakers, advertising, working with the hotel, coordinating with vendors, selecting scholarship winners, and setting up the banquet and silent auction certainly did not go unnoticed.

At this year’s conference, I attended a workshop on using Facebook and other new social media tools such as HistoryPin to engage and build audiences. During the session “Turn it Up,” the director and an intern at the New Castle Historical Society discussed some of the free or inexpensive tools you can use to create an audio tour. In “Collections that Bite” the Air Mobility Command Museum’s director focused on identifying and mitigating some of the health and safety hazards in museum collections. Perhaps the most rewarding session was a roundtable with emerging professionals also attended by trustees, mid-career professionals and directors with decades of experience. The free discussion about experience, job searching, and what to expect when you begin your career was extremely valuable. On behalf of the SMA board I thank all of the speakers for their preparation, enthusiasm, and hard work in contributing to the success of this conference.  Special thanks to Sarah Brophy and Cinnamon Caitlin-Legutko.

What I will take away most this year was this: there is a common perception that small museums should learn from larger museums. However, as plenary speaker Cinnamon Caitlin-Legutko reminded us, small museums can also be models for the rest of the field.  By our nature we are deeply embedded in our communities. We deliver programs, produce exhibits, and achieve high standards of collections stewardship with very limited resources.  By sharing our successes and failures we help each other succeed and that is a worthy model to promote.  Thanks again and I hope to see you next year in Ocean City!

For the Love of the Small Museum: Propose Conference Sessions

Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko was the plenary speaker on Feb. 22 at the 2012 Small Museum Association Conference in Ocean City, Maryland. Below is an excerpt from her speech entitled “For the Love of the Small Museum: The Making of the Small Museum Toolkit,” where she reminds us about the importance of not only attending conferences, but of bringing the small museum voice to conference panels.

“Small museum people like you can do more to promote a dialogue. Time and again I have sat on conference program committees looking, searching for, and not finding many session proposals from small museum leaders. These are few and far between. More often, panelists from larger museums will propose a session that focuses on nuts-and-bolts work, and because of its basic topic, it’s touted as being for the small museum audience. And there’s no one on the panel who works in a small museum. ALL museum practitioners benefit from nuts-and-bolts sessions from time to time. This is not a “small museum thing;” this is a “continuing education thing.”

Advocacy groups, like AAM’s Small Museum Administrators Committee and AASLH’s Small Museums Committee, work hard to ensure conferences provide ample opportunities for small museum attendees. But I can tell you that too few of you are providing the proposals.

What the museum field needs are more session proposals from small museum practitioners sharing case studies, best practice strategies, and overall museum excellence with panels of colleagues from small, medium, and large museums. This will change the mistaken – and certainly short-sighted – perception that Steve Friesen, from the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave, writes about in Chapter 1 of Book 1 of the Small Museum Toolkit:

“To many people a small museum is a museum that has too little money, too few staff, too small facilities, and even too little knowledge. This negative approach to the small museum brings with it a stereotype that the small museum is a place that is somehow incomplete or needs desperately to learn from big museums.”

Your participation in conference panels will focus attention on small museums in the best light. Yes, money is tight; it is for everyone. But please, find a way to attend AAM or AASLH (or both) each year and be a session chair or panelist. Maybe hatch a plan with some of your closest museum colleagues to take turns attending these conferences. Apply for scholarships. Get grant funding to attend. Many of you already attend, and I’m glad you do, but the small museum field needs you to prepare session proposals and show our colleagues how awesome we all are.

What will we get in return? More seats at the table, as we talk about the museum community’s future. More resources shared with us by our museum peers and awarded to us through grants. More visitors to our museums, allowing our missions to spread more broadly and deeply across America. This is our highest purpose and the reason why we do the work we do.”

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.   Cinnamon can be reached at cinnamon@abbemuseum.org.

Conference Presenter: Jesse Gagnon

Hi! My name is Jesse Gagnon and I’m currently a graduate student at the University of Delaware earning my master’s degree in history and my museum studies certificate. This past summer I was very lucky to intern at the New Castle Historical Society designing an audio walking tour. And I’m really looking forward to presenting with Mike Connolly, the executive director of the New Castle Historical Society, this year at SMA.

At the Historical Society, we often get visitors stopping by on days that our museum is closed or our buildings are full of school children. In the past we’ve had to turn many of them away since we didn’t have the resources or space to accommodate them. Now, with an audio walking tour, we can provide tours of our historic district for visitors year-round without having to schedule and pay extra tour guides. We wrote, recorded and produced the tour in-house, and saved lots of money in the process. And since we rent the tour, it’s a new revenue stream for the organization!

If you’d like to utilize technology to help with your interpretation and minimize personnel costs, but are intimidated by the equipment and software or just don’t know how or where to start, then our presentation, Turn It Up! Self-Produced Audio Tours For Your Museum, is for you!

Using inexpensive and readily available equipment and software you can produce CD-quality audio recordings, like this one, for next to nothing. We’ll help you choose recording software and equipment that will fit any budget. We’ll discuss how you can use audio immediately in the interpretation of your museum or historic site, and how the basic audio recordings you make now can be used to develop smart phone apps and other interpretive tools later. We’ll also provide an opportunity for you to try a test recording so you can see just how easy it is!

Give some thought to how an audio tour might help you better interpret your museum while stretching those precious dollars a little further! Then join us on Monday morning, February 20, at the SMA Conference in Ocean City.

See you then!