The HRC thanks Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko, CEO of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine, for serving as guest author for the following entry.  Cinnamon is an AASLH Council member and is program chair for the 2010 AASLH Annual Meeting in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  Before joining the staff of the Abbe Museum, as director of the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum in Crawfordsville, Indiana, Cinnamon guided the museum to a 2008 IMLS National Medal for Museum and Library Service--the nation's highest honor for museums and libraries.

In August during the AASLH annual meeting in Indianapolis, the Institute for Museum and Library Service (IMLS) unveiled a new assessment tool for museums to use as we sharpen our focus and plan for the future. The Museums, Libraries and 21st Century Skills initiative underscores the critical role museums and libraries play in helping citizens build such 21st century skills as information, communications and technology literacy, critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, civic literacy, and global awareness.

The initiative has resulted in three elements: an online self assessment tool, a formal report, and an assessment matrix to help you compare museum operations to widely accepted 21st Century Skills. In a nutshell, this initiative is giving us the language and strategic direction that we need to meet the educational needs of our communities and align with current thinking.

What can this tool do for your organization?

• The organizational model has changed for museum organizations - we really have to demonstrate the "so what" factor in our mission, programming, and collections. In a world of shrinking resources, relevancy to contemporary life is the key to long term sustainability. Demonstrating how our educational offerings meet the needs of a 21st century work force will certainly net desired results for attendance, funding, and volunteerism.

• We all have to dig deeper and find out what our communities need us to be and how can we be part of community solutions. What are my town's biggest issues? Where is there the greatest need? The language provided in this assessment tool will help us identify those opportunities and organize our ability to provide solutions.

• To inspire action and change, we need to convey a sense of urgency. I know I feel that every day, but I don't know that my staff, board, and constituents feel it as deeply. Moving through the assessment tool, we can easily illuminate action steps and make the case for support.

Simply put, this tool is a way to: articulate why you matter, initiate a solution oriented dialogue, and provide the leverage to make it happen as fast as possible. We don't need to completely scrap the important work we're doing, but we can use this new toolkit to align our good work with commonly accepted statements about 21st Century Skills.

To learn more about this important IMLS initiative, visit the 21st Century Skills Web site, take the self assessment, and start charting your course for the 21st century.