TYPE OF MENTOR SOUGHT;

Someone with experience in volunteer coordination who
can teach me the subtle art of dealing with
well-meaning volunteers who may be older than I and
who may have difficulty accepting direction on the
basis of age.

AND/OR

Someone in collection maintenance/cataloging, and/or
archiving who can teach me some real organizational
tricks

AND/OR

Someone on the West Coast who can give me career
support and guidance so that I might segue into the
museums world on a paying--as opposed to
volunteer--basis


CONTACT KATHLEEN BY EMAIL AT:
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MEET KATHLEEN WADELL

I need someone who knows how to deal with difficult
volunteers and self-destructing collections.  Like
everyone, I also need general career advice - how do I
get to the interpretive side of museum work?

I received an MA in Public History from New York
University in 2000, with emphasis on the Caribbean and
the early to mid-20th century United States.

Right now, I work at AltaMira Press, the producers of
PastPerfect software.  If you call their Walnut Creek
office for technical support or training, you will
speak to me.

More to the point, I volunteer at the Berkeley
Historical Society, an all-volunteer organization with
a small exhibit gallery and painfully messy
collection. I'm the volunteer coordinator, the
organizer of our next exhibit, and the person in
charge of cataloging our artifacts.

I'm particularly frustrated by the collection
maintenance/cataloging part of the job.  No one in the
organization has any more training than I do (none),
and most volunteers have never been in a real archive.
How should I approach the collection?  How should I
approach long-time volunteers who don't want to take
suggestions from a 25-year old kid?  How can I help
professionalize the organization? And how do I do this
every Saturday without getting burned out?

Katie Wadell
PastPerfect Support
AltaMira Press
925-938-7243


=====
Indigo Nights
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Looking for a job?  Try:
http://victorian.fortunecity.com/stanmer/414   OR
http://www.workers.gov/  (US Federal Government Resource)

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