While the museum field’s focus has shifted toward better serving the public in recent years, institutions must not lose site of another critical piece of their core mission: the care and protection of historic properties and collections. Collections should remain a museum’s focal point and institutions should work to not only improve visitor access to, but also ensure the safety and stability of, their holdings.
By some estimates, over 190 million historic objects in our collections are in need of conservation. Want to avoid becoming another statistic? Use the resources below to learn how to better store, conserve, exhibit, and interpret your collections to the public.
Are your storage facilities clogged with unidentified or undocumented objects? In A Deaccession Reader, museum ethics and legal issues writer Stephen Weil argues that when carefully applied, deaccessioning can provide institutions with an important opportunity to chart institutional priorities,... Read More >>
Four Museum Registration Text Suggestions
The HRC thanks Julie Frey, Curator of Collections at the Litchfield Historical Society in Litchfield, CT, for volunteering to be a guest author for the following entry and for sharing her insight and experience with our readers. Are you struggling to manage your museum's collection? Are you unsure what records are important... Read More >>
Basics of Archives Continuing Education Program
The HRC thanks Linda Hocking, Curator of Library and Archives at the Litchfield Historical Society in Litchfield, CT, for volunteering to be a guest author for the following entry and for sharing her insight and experience with our readers. The Basics of Archives Continuing Education Program (BACE) provides participants... Read More >>
dPlan: The Online Disaster-Planning Tool
Is your museum ready if disaster strikes? Do you know what to do if your library's books become soaked after a burst pipe? What about if a mold outbreak happens in your collection storage area? dPlan is a FREE online tool that will help you and your institution simplify the process of writing a disaster... Read More >>
The Museum Forms Book
The Museum Forms Book, edited by Kenneth D. Perry, comes under the category of "why re-invent the wheel?" First published in 1980, and now in its 3rd printing, the book is a compendium of all types of forms collected from museums in this country and as far flung as Great Britain and New Zealand. The Museum Forms Book includes... Read More >>
Rethinking the Rembrandt Rule
The recent data collected by Reach Advisors in the Connecticut Cultural Consumers Study initiated by the CHC and Connecticut Landmarks confirmed what I had always suspected about visitors and historic sites: people want to play house.Visitors want to get closer to the objects, they want to sit in the chairs, dine at the... Read More >>
Connecting to Collections Resources
The HRC thanks Kathleen Craughwell-Varda, Project Manager, Conservation ConneCTion, Connecticut State Library, in Hartford, CT, for volunteering to be a guest author for the following entry and for sharing her insight and experience with our readers.Trying to find reliable sources on caring for historic collections can... Read More >>
A Deaccession Reader
Basics of Archives Continuing Education Program
Rethinking the Rembrandt Rule
