Message-ID: <5da0f4ab.1c69fb81.b8208.a254@mx.google.com> From: Lisa Lickel <lisalickel@gmail.com> Subject: RE: advice for starting a local history center Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2019 16:31:25 -0500
Hi, Jason,
A collections policy gives the group direction regarding what you will acce
pt and what you will do with it. You may find people excited to donate old
stuff from their basements or attics that is damaged or whatever just becau
se it’s old; or the worst thing is trying to donate grandmaâ€
™s tarnished silver tea set from who knows where (or reportedly made by P
aul Revere with no provenance), and want you to display it right now, right
…there…because it means so much to them. Oh, and theyâ€
™d like to borrow it whenever Aunt so and so comes to town. And if you ev
er decide to get rid of it, you have to give it back. People may want to gi
ve you sensitive material, such as burial mound items grandpa dug up, feath
ers, or ivory this and that or Victorian-era stuffed critters that leak for
maldehyde—things that are potentially hazardous or now illegal to c
ollect, or unidentified photographs or film clips with no signed permission
s to allow public display, so you need to be aware of those things, and let
the donors know, if you decided to do this, that once you accept something
it’s yours to have and use or not use or dispose of or sell. If yo
u want to have individual riders, go ahead and make those stipulations, but
it has to be part of the property and display management that is handed do
wn and made clear to all incoming staff. We designed materials pages that c
over every aspect of donations, like a big chart, that includes the date of
the item given, who is the donor, who is the recipient, then a detailed de
scription of the item, etc., including the cataloguing information and wher
e it is stored at the society, and what happens when it’s no longer
used. Yes, you can use Past Perfect or any other program, but it’s
always good to have a back up.
IP is intellectual property, and covers books, albums, scrapbooks, personal
art, hand-written and oral histories; anything recorded or arranged in a n
ew way that may or may not have been previously published. We had a dressma
ker, for example, who sewed her own creations for local residents. Those pa
tterns were not published, but if we did want to recreate them and sell the
m, we would have had to have had hers or her descendant/estate’s pe
rmission to do so when those items were donated. Same thing with music, if
original, with scripts if you do something like a walking history tour; you
have to make it clear that if a volunteer is putting the tour together, th
e information belongs to the society. If someone creates original music or
a play, even a cocktail or special dish, or something like that for a socie
ty purpose, establish those rights at the start.
For collections policy example, you can find oodles of them on the net, Min
nesota has good ones: http://www.mnhs.org/; http://search.mnhs.org/?brand
=findaids
Best wishes,
Lisa Lickel
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
From: Jason Tish
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2019 4:04 PM
To: localhistory@listserve.uwec.edu
Subject: Re: advice for starting a local history center
Thanks Lisa. What does a collections policy cover? Do you have any good exa
mples? Also, what is IP? Â
(I'm the organization and fund-raising person, and have little experience w
ith collections. We are looking for a person with museum/exhibit/collection
s experience, bt have not found one yet who can commit to a long-term effor
t.)
Thanks again for your advice,
-Jason Tish
Madison Local History Museum Working Group
On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 7:48 PM Lisa J. Lickel <lisalickel@gmail.com> wrote
:
Farmington has been in the same place. A good website and dedicated people
available to regularly answer questions is important. You should also estab
lish a collections policy right away and stick to it. Make people describe
donations and sign off on whatever the society decides is policy. You are a
lso in a unique position to start cataloguing material and IP from the very
beginning. Do it well and consistently and you will develop an amazing and
accessible database easy to use. Involve many people.
-- - Jason