Local History Standards

The conversation about credentialing local history workers tends to be periodic. It often revolves around momentary needs to assure employers, the public and funders of the legitimacy of local history work. American Association of Museums’ Emerging Museum Professional Survey provides a glimpse of new museum worker needs, which could inform the discussion as credentials not only need to help the public understand what we do but also serve the worker.

The purpose of credentials really is to build trust in a knowledge base; in other words, credentials establish legitimacy. While some credentials require a degree from an accredited educational institution, in many fields these often come from a variety of sources that demonstrate the integrity of the worker’s skills and knowledge.

How might the local history community in Minnesota certify its trustworthy workers? Would local history workers benefit from a credential? Here are a few (mostly) do-it-yourself credentials that spring to mind, with both pros and cons:

Awards Programs: Minnesota Alliance of Local History Museums, American Association for State and Local History, Preservation Alliance of Minnesota, and Friends of Minnesota Barns all offer awards programs. These are free to enter, but remember only the work that truly represents the best of the field gets recognized. Projects and functions that do not go above and beyond a routine generally do not receive recognition. However, sometimes it is the discipline of routine that needs recognition most.

Small Museum Pro!promises certification for workers in small and rural museums throughout the country by focusing on practical museum training.  All-online courses cover Museum Administration, Collections Management, Collections Care, Exhibitions, and Museum Education and Outreach. Small Museum Pro! program should affordably fill gaps in professional training common to among small, emerging and rural museum workers. Courses cost $195 each.  To receive Small Museum Pro! certification, participants must complete all five courses.  

Continuing Education: A survey conducted at the Minnesota Local History Workshops this past spring revealed the preference among survey respondents statewide that, to stay current, local history workers should be accomplishing 15 hours of continuing education annually. That means reading trade publications, attending workshops and classes, participating in conferences, teaching classes, being active in other meetings (such as serving on the board of the Minnesota Alliance of Local History Museums, on a Minnesota Association of Museums committee, etc.). Keeping track of time spent improving skills could inspire trust in potential funders. Doubters may, however, dismiss your records as not measuring to a common standard.

Let’s continue the conversation. While time is a limited resource, it is necessary to spend time validating what we do in the eyes of the public and funders. How do you do that? Would it be useful to have some organization set a common standard? If so, should that organization be broad (e.g. a museum or nonprofit association) or focused (e.g. a history organization)? National, or statewide? How might credentials matter to your board, the public or funders?

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In the world of betting, the over-under is a wager that an actual score in a game will be over or under a number set by a sportsbook manager. In the nonprofit world, the over-under refers to over-organization and undercapitalization.

A lot of ink has been used to detail how little needed another museum - especially a historic house museum - actually is. Carol Kammen in her “On Doing Local History” column in the Summer 2009 issue of History News reports on a 1936 AASLH census of history related organizations that showed 583 in the United States that year. She notes the count probably was less than complete. Today estimates put that number around17,500, with most having been established in the last 40 years. Over-organization is a concern when there is a finite number of resources (time, money, people) to support each organization.

Kammen briefly touches on the sacrifices made to establish organizational presence in its community. Many unseen volunteer hours went into organizing, collecting, indexing, and making accessible the history preserved by the organization that often the community takes for granted the history without acknowledging the serious effort applied by organizers. Often efforts to establish organizations require sacrifices, but these resources can wear thin in time leaving the organization undercapitalized at its core. While some experts may say it is number of organizations and rate of creation, the real concern more likely is the unsustainable undercapitalization of core functions.

In working with well-intentioned citizens who wish to organize to preserve history, these arguments about over and under really do not concern the enthusiast. The response often is that where others have failed, they are sure to succeed. How could they not? They can see the passion, excitement, and energy around them at least in the short term, that they hope to build for the long term. But building on emotion is problematic at best and betting on the outcome is almost a near-certainty for both the enthusiasts and observers (but with two totally different expected results). The field needs to develop a menu of measures from which enthusiasts may choose in order to better evaluate their long term chances of success.

Local history organizations face these same challenges within their communities. How do you awaken enthusiasts to the hard realities of successful organizing to accomplish what they think they want to do?

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On Wednesday and Thursday last week the American Association of Museums held a webinar to address the nation’s financial crisis as it relates to cultural organizations. One concept that emerged was “redeployment.” We’ve often heard that we must “do more with less” or more recently that we should “do less with less.” Commentators however suggested that cultural organizations constantly adapt and even in the best of times there isn’t enough money to simply add more to already over-worked employees and volunteers. Instead, we must make strategic allocation of the limited assets of time and money through redeployment. That means stopping some services that are outdated and no longer highly desired, and adding new practices that further our missions.

If you were to redeploy to best meet your mission in the modern climate, what aspects that you do now might you consider obsolete? What emerging practices might you adopt?

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Collecting and applying user statistics can help your organization grow its program or make hard choices in lean times. What statistics do you track? How has what you learned shaped your program?

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Recently the Grants Office fielded a call from a county historical society considering a grant for an exhibit that would include a SMART Board. That recalled to mind the wonderful and nationally award-winning exhibit “Eating Out in Clay County” and the Clay County Historical Society. For that exhibit staff included blank notebooks wherein a visitor could respond to the exhibit as prompted by a question. The SMART Board would allow for the same kind of interaction electronically.

On the web, the Minnesota Historical Society recently began using Write on the Record, or WOTR (pronounced “water”), to enable visitors to annotate digital content, much like a reader of this blog can respond to the blog. For example, a researcher can annotate a database record using WOTR to let other researchers know of potential errors in the original, without altering the original record.

It’s encouraging to see how repositories of public trusts now more openly trust the public to add to the overall record. Your thoughts? What are ways that the public can add content by interacting with a local historical organization’s product?

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How many of this blog’s readers have emergency disaster plans for their museums? If you do, where did you start? How did you create a plan that covers every eventuality? Or does your plan just cover the most likely disaster scenarios?

Mary Warner

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Minnesota has roughly 1,800 townships, the most local unit of government. Each of those townships over time has kept record of its proceedings and details that describe the history of each one. They often contain genealogical data useful to family history researchers, and information about roads and bridges that consultants need to complete reports for state and federal projects. These records have a tremendous potential for researchers on numerous projects.

However, these records are often the most endangered in the state. Many local historical museums report finding township records in haymows, under kitchen sinks, buried in the back of closets, in remote township halls subject to arson, and even sent to the dump. The large number of records would require much work for one organization to preserve them all. Therefore, several local historical organizations are helping to preserve township records.

The Renville County Historical Society in Morton has undertaken a project that could serve as a model to many organizations. It applied for and received a grant from the Minnesota State Grants-in-Aid program for the first phase of a project to microfilm all township records in the county through the year 2000. This way the information contained in the township records will be available to the public during regular hours in its research library. RCHS followed the example of the Milaca Area Historical Society that microfilmed several township record sets in its area. When RCHS is complete, it may be the first county with a complete set of microfilm records for its townships.

Another way that local history museums have preserved township records is to enter into an agreement with the State Archives to be the repository for local government records. For more information about these agreements, contact Charlie Rodgers at the State Archives.

In what ways are you working with township supervisors to promote the preservation of their official records?

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Does your organization have an affinity group? Recent reports from experts in the history field have shown that relying on heritage tourism will not by itself improve use of museums and historic sites. It is one component of usage, which happens to have people who stay longer and spend more. However, for the history museum and historic site that want to improve the number of users and to grow users into significant donors, developing affinity groups appears to be a promising method. Some of Minnesota’s local historical organizations offer book clubs and art shows in communities that are too small to support them otherwise. There may be others, such as veteran’s and living history groups; card, dance, food, model railroad clubs; hiking, canoeing, bicycling, snowmobiling, and other outdoors affinity groups.  Two questions:

1. If you have such an affinity group, in what ways does that group partner with and enhance your organization?

2. If you have no affinity groups, can you speculate on what kinds of affinity groups might be needed in your community?

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Over the years a lot has been said about what government and nonprofits could learn from business. In the latest issue of the McKinsey Quarterly, Richard Haass says in an interview that businesses could learn much from government. such as building up protections from man-made and natural disasters, or investing in literacy to create a more skilled workforce. Thinking about what businesses could learn from government is an appropriate reversal of common assertions to the contrary. The article then prompts the next question: what could businesses learn from nonprofits? In this case, specifically what could businesses learn from nonprofit historical organizations?

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With the death of Mona Nelson on February 6, 2008, a moment of reflection is appropriate. Mona led the Kandiyohi County Historical Society and formation of the Minnesota Alliance of Local History Museums. Other leaders since the 1920s, both volunteer and paid staff, have shaped local history in Minnesota, too. However, collectively the record and analysis of Minnesota’s vibrant historical organization community certainly is difficult to find. Many of the blog’s subscribers know many of the legendary leaders of this community. If you could  nominate one of those leaders as worthy to be remembered, who would that be, and why?

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