I am the curator of a small history museum in rural Minnesota, USA, and
chair of the Collections Documentation Standards Committee of the Minnesota
Alliance of Local History Museums (MAHLM). The committee's purpose is to
provide standards and information on documentation to the staff of
Minnesota museums. Most of these museums are very small and rural, with
staff who have little or no museum training. Typically, these museums have
budgets ranging from about $5,000 or less to $80,000 US (with a few in
slightly higher brackets), 0 to 10 paid staff members, with collections of
4,000 to 15,000 objects. Individually, these museums may seem
insignificant. Collectively, they hold important evidence of our regional
heritage.

A current project of our committee is to prepare a model collections
management manual, to be customized by individual institutions. Work
procedes slowly: all the committee members are on staff of small museums,
with many responsibilities. We are presently looking at the UK SPECTRUM
from the MDA as a possible model. We are, necessarily, heavy on practical
application with less emphasis on theory.

We originally subscribed to CIDOC-L intending to lurk and learn. There is
no reason small museums should not work toward the same level of excellence
as large museums, but on a different scale. In fact, small collections
sometimes permit more complete documentation than very large collections. I
feel it is essential, even for small museums, to be aware of the larger,
international issues in documentation, even if they may not be immediately
applicable to all situations.

I hope in the future to see discussion of documentation issues or projects
on the list. Perhaps ICOM-L is not the appropriate forum, but we also need
a way to put questions before the larger museum committee. For example, at
present our deaccessioning policy needs to be revised. This is the ideal
medium to request examples of other intitution's policies for study and
comparison.

Larry Hutchings, Curator

Stevens County Historical Society
SCHS Museum
116 West Sixth Street
Morris MN 56267

Tel. (320) 589-1719
e-mail: [log in to unmask]