Topic Suggestion: Computers and Accessioning

Hans from Parksville writes:


Hi Lisa,

With hundreds of small museums in the province, I was surprised to find so little activity on the blog. Am I missing something?

I have been the summer-time manager of the Parksville Museum since 2002 except for a short stint as manager of the Qualicum Beach Museum. Both are small community museums. The staff consists of me and 2-4 summer students, we are only open from mid-May to end of September, we have only 1,500 – 2,000 visitors, there is considerable involvement by volunteers, we are managed by a working board, and our annual budget is about $50,000. Question: What is a good working definition of a small museum? How about: Maximum annual budget of $100K or maximum of 2 paid full-time staff .

As the so-called manager, I do everything: janitorial, grounds and building maintenance, developing displays, guiding tours, training and supervising summer students, fund raising, publicity, historical research, special events, accessioning and archiving. And that is one of the problems with managing small museums: one has to be willing to wear many hats. I would be interested to hear how other managers of small museums manage to deal with all these varied responsibilities. At the Osoyoos conference it would be nice to have lots of opportunity to meet with and talk to staff from other small museums.

I would be very interested in a discussion of how to speed up and streamline accessioning as well as a discussion of the pros and cons of various software programs for small museums such as PastPerfect In a lot of small museums much of the work is done by seniors many of which are uncomfortable with computers. In those instances, what are the pros and cons of staying with paper forms.

I will leave it at that and see what sort of response there is. Maybe managers of small museums are just too busy to spend time blogging.

Cheers,

Hans Boerger, Manager
Parksville and District Historical Society
(www.parksvillemuseum.ca)