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As a small museum staff person, you are responsible for a lot,
including areas outside of your expertise or training. You need a
quick reference that makes the process of becoming a sustainable,
valued institution less overwhelming. The Small Museum Toolkit is a
collection of six books that serves as a launching point for small
museum staff to pursue best practices and meet museum standards.
These brief volumes address governance, financial management, human
resources, audience relations, interpretation, and stewardship for
small museums and historic sites. The Small Museum Toolkit, written
by thirty-four experienced museum professionals, helps you define
the questions you should be asking, gives you tools to achieve your
goals, and guides you where to go for help. Books in the Small
Museum Toolkit set Book One - Leadership, Mission, and Governance
Book Two - Financial Resource Development and Management Book Three
- Organizational Management Book Four - Reaching and Responding to
the Audience Book Five - Interpretation: Education, Programs, and
Exhibits Book Six - Stewardship: Collections and Historic
Preservation
Small museums face the same challenges as large museums on a
tighter budget and with fewer resources. Navigating these obstacles
requires strong leadership and effective governance. The creation
and use of planning documents and a clear mission and vision are
essential to pursuing the long-term health of an organization. This
book features concise, grounded approaches to finding and
articulating the mission and vision of a small museum. Because a
few tools have been invaluable to small museum leaders, the book
also highlights the MAP and CAP assessment process, accreditation,
and provides an overview of the StEPs program.
Small museums must adopt policies of financial responsibility and
stability if they are to last. Through an organized commitment to
transparency and accountability, small museums can achieve sound
financial management just like their larger counterparts. This book
offers sample fiscal policies, guides to fundraising plans, and
budgeting templates to help small museums manage their money
effectively. It also details the fundraising methods available to
small museums and how to measure your progress towards funding
goals. Lastly, the book surveys many common legal issues relating
to small museums as they pertain to financial management and other
topics in the series, such as copyright, human resources.
Effectively managing people, facilities, and partnerships can make
or break an institution. Museum operations encompasses
responsibility for the maintenance of your structure, the safety of
your visitors, and the security of your staff and collections. This
behind-the-scenes administrative effort is rarely what calls people
to work in museums, but good organizational management keeps your
institution functioning smoothly. This book examines how to find
and work well with all the people who can contribute daily to the
museum: paid staff, volunteers, and interns. It also provides many
organizational resources such as an outline for an operations
policy manual, sample job descriptions, and a sample partnership
agreement.
Museums exist to serve their audiences; however, the scope of this
charge is constantly being challenged and changed. This book looks
at new roles small museums have taken as they find ways to become
irreplaceable members of the community, engaging with and
advocating for their audience from large-scale marketing and public
relations efforts to welcome signs and entrances. Book Five
encourages small museums to examine their audiences and make them
comfortable, program to their needs and interests, and spread the
word about the museum s good work. It also features several case
studies of successful evaluation programs, sample press releases,
accessibility checklists, visitor experience checklists and more.
Programs, tours and exhibits are the meat-and-potatoes of what most
museums do to meet their missions to educate the public.
Interpretation helps make small museums compelling so that the
public understands that they are more than a repository of dusty
objects. This book considers researching and designing exhibits and
best practices for sharing the stories with your audiences. It
explores how to orient your organization to be effective
interpreters of what you collect, including how to tell engaging
stories and how to address difficult issues you may have ignored in
the past, like slavery, prejudice and privilege. For the
non-historian, it also offers a step-by-step primer on good
historical research.
Proper collections care, planning, and conservation is an essential
responsibility for a museum of any size, but funding for these
obligations often falls to the bottom of funding priorities because
its constituencies are the quietest. Small museums need affordable
ways to provide basic care for their collections and the tools to
lobby for additional funds for the long-term health of collections.
Small museums often do not have staff expertise on the maintenance
and preservation of these large and expensive pieces of history.
This book offers practical tips for collections care, including
preservation strategies for historic properties and a primer on
managing potential harms to your artifacts.
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