This has been sent to Museum-L, Childmus, and Museum-Ed. Please forgive
duplications.

Hello, folks --

This is FYI for US subscribers.

I don't recall seeing mention of the above Act on the list (I may have
missed it - if so, feel free to use the "D" key now).

Our President (Mr. Sterling, not Mr. Clinton) recently asked me to find a
copy of the Volunteer Protection Act of 1997. After looking at the thing
itself, I thought it would be helpful for others to know about it, too.

You can, eventually, get to the text of the Act by pointing your browser
to:
     http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d105/d105laws.html

(the characters after the "d"s are ones, not lower case "L"s)

then click and scroll until you get to the Act. Again, the cite is Public
Law (PL) 105-19.

Following are a couple of quotes from the text to give you an idea of what
it's all about.

"An Act to provide certain protections to volunteers, nonprofit
organizations, and governmental entities in lawsuits based on the
activities of volunteers."

and

"Purpose -- The purpose of this Act is to promote the interests of social
service program beneficiaries and taxpayers and to sustain the
availability of programs, nonprofit organizations, and governmental
entities that depend on volunteer contributions by reforming the laws to
provide certain protections from liability abuses related to volunteers
serving nonprofit organizations and governmental entities."  (Do these
folks get paid by the number of words not separated by a period?)

HTH

Happy legal research, y'all!

Gregg Jackson
Librarian
The Children's Museum of Indianapolis
"Where children grow up ... and adults don't have to!"

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