>...the
>first thing I found was that there were about three people shouldering all the
>burdens of the musuem, and they didn't have time to stop and plan jobs for any
>number of eager volunteers--they were too busy trying to keep things running.

Yes, indeed! Volunteers consume time - in induction, training and in
supervision. And all too often they leave very soon, either because they
find that museum work is not as "interesting" as they had thought, or
because they find paid employment. In the latter case I'm always happy for
them, but in either case it means that the investment of time is almost
wasted. Time is something museum staff are chronically short of (pardon the
pun).


>They need volunteers, but they don't need people who need to be coddled
>and babied along.

Yes! Perhaps I'm a cynic, but I have seen volunteers who treat the
institution as a social centre, not as a workplace.


>They need self-starters who will sieze the initiative to do what needs to
be done.

Say rather that we need people who can be given direction and then be left
to get on with the job without too much close supervision. God save me from
volunteers with an *excess* of initiative - the type who decide that it
would be faster to clean the brass with a wire brush, for instance.


>And you don't do these things because you expect to be thanked--you do
>them because they'll help your museum.

And that is one of the most interesting points of all. Why do volunteers
volunteer? What do they expect to get from the museum? What does the museum
expect to get from them? What does the volunteer do if their expectations
are unfulfilled? And what does the museum do with volunteers who are, to put
it bluntly, more trouble than they are worth?


Peter Volk               |"I am not stupid, I am not expendable
Queensland Museum        | and I am not going." - Avon (Blakes Seven)
Australia                |
[log in to unmask]  | I speak for myself, not my employer.