Carrie --

If there is no archivist or records manager on staff
at  Museum of Church History and Art, ask people at a
nearby repositories for specific assistance.  A person
with some familiarity with your museum who has
expertise in preserving and then accessing information
would be more helpful than somebody who is not
familiar.

First off, are you asking about downloading files from
individual personal computers, i.e. transferring data
or possibly information? or are you asking about how
to save knowledge.  If the first, people with IT
experience could give you the technical details.

 
However, the raw data and information most people have
in their files is not knowledge.  If you are concerned
about saving as much of the enterprise know-how as
possible, a simple step is to have each person review
the museum's manual(s) of policies and procedures and
recommend additions, deletions and changes to be
entered.  It's amazing how far the policy and the
actual practice can diverge over time.

Retiring staff are frequently asked to contribute oral
histories because that's a fairly simple way to
capture a lot of organizational knowledge but it's
going to be in a highly disorganized form. 
Transcribing the oral interviews and indexing them so
they are useful to people with questions a couple of
years from now is a time-consuming and often costly
extra step.  

We had several roomfuls of audio and video tapes at
the museum where I worked for many years.  Many of the
tapes were interviews with staff which may have
contained helpful detail on important events and
activities.  The very few occasions when I dug
(literally) through the collection were in connection
with requests from outside scholars doing in-depth
research for publication.  Museum staff just came up
with new ways of doing things.

Judy Turner
Whitefish Bay, WI

--- Carrie Snow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Does anyone have a transition plan they use for when
> staff retires?  We are
> looking at some retirements in the next 12-18 months
> and I would like to have a
> plan for downloading organizational knowledge before
> staff is gone. 
>  
> Thank you, 
> Carrie
>  
> Carrie Snow
> Supervisor Collections Care- Art and Artifacts
> Museum of Church History and Art
> 45 North West Temple Street
> Salt Lake City, UT 84150
> (801) 240-4619
> (801) 240-5342
>


       
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