My museum has been proactive for a number of years, in several years.
 Before I came here in 2000, the museum regularly had "History Harvests"
to gather artifacts and information for specific exhibit topics.  It
would run for several hours on a Saturday and would encourage anyone to
drop by who had photos, artifacts, or stories of this topic.  I think
they were fairly successful, particularly with photos - portable and
easy to copy if owners didn't want to part with originals - and
developing contacts with people who could offer information.

Since I've been here, we've done one exhibit on "Collecting the Late
20th Century" to encourage donations of all those things people take for
granted.  It generated some donations but a lot of questions - "I don't
get it, why do you want this stuff?"  "Can you be more specific, exactly
what do you want?"  I've also solicited donations for exhibits we want
to do in the next few years.  This has been in the form of articles in
our own newsletter, signs in our museum, and articles in the local
newspaper.  It hasn't resulted in a flood of objects, but we get a few
donations, and to the people who are enthusiastic about a certain topic
it shows we're on the ball.  It also inspires some people to come
forward and say, "You're collecting X, don't you want Y?" and Y may be
something we want.

John

PS I was the aforementioned Philly basher - but I definitely agree, the
Philly cheesesteaks were out of this world.  And I do miss having a soft
pretzel and a Coke for breakfast.

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