Collections Management Planning

So what was the point?

Today, I am flying to Houston to the American Association of Museums' annual conference. On Monday I will be participating in a session on Collections Management Planning for small museums. The session is called Planning Tomorrow's Collections Today.

Now, this should really make my friend and colleague Cheryl laugh. But the reality is that all the time we spent working on development projects at OHS evidently prepared me very well. Collections planning is relatively new to the museum's field. But in the last three years I have been through the process of working on a Collections Management Plan at two different museums.

I kind of have developed a whole program. It started one day when I found an article on the AAM website called Collections Planning: Pinning Down a Strategy. I adapted an outline from this article that I thought would work as a real effective tool for using collections as a development and revenue generation strategy:

1) What is our audience? How do we engage them?

2) What are the strengths and weaknesses of our collection?

3) What is our ideal collection?

4) Is there anything else we need? What would we take if it were donated?

5) Who has “complementary collections” to ours?

6) What are our needed resources for using collections to build exhibits or programs?

7) What action are we going to take?

I was right. It has been one of my most effective planning tools in developing adventure tours and exhibits. What I really need to do is start presenting papers on Adventure Exhibits.

Sorry, I know that this is not the fun stuff.