As has long been stated here, volunteering is one of the better ways to get your foot in the door at a museum, but one should be careful, they don't just take your foot and your leg too. For any of you who volunteer, if you have some sort of spreadsheeting capability on your compuer (Excel?), I strongly encourage you to track your volunteer hours. Record date, hours spent, to whom you were assigned to work under, what institution, and what you did. Take the number of hours you volunteered, and project that against the Points of Light figure for a volunteer hour, which, for 2004, was listed as $17.55 per hour (STOP: I know many of you don't even make that as employees, but that's the figure you have to work with and is comparable to the IRS figure). Run a cumulative total of the number of hours you have donated to the Institution and a cumulative value of your contribution therefor. Use your statistics to try to leverage you into a full-time position but, if the money isn't there, and they're simply carroting and donkeying you along, you still have data you can use for resume purposes in attempting to get another position. If they promise you anything (except money) to keep you there and don't deliver, is there another museum in the area in which you can offer your services where the chances of acquiring a job are greater? If yes, I'd say go offer yourself there. If there is nothing in your area to which you could transfer your skills and abilities, I'd have to ask you: o Why are you volunteering there in the first place? Is it for a job or the experience to qualify for a job? o What would you do with your time otherwise if you weren't volunteering? Would you simply stop applying yourself and your talents to a museum because a job wasn't there? o How are you otherwise sustaining yourself? Do you already have a job and do this in your spare time trying to get one in the museum field? If you've already got a job to pay the bills and would simply be sitting at home, not being a part of a museum, then I'd say don't quit. If there's another place who would be a better job lead, go there if they'll have you. The place for which you are currently volunteering may never hire you. But you are also using them in some ways to acquire job knowledge and skills. The information you track on your spreadsheet should help on your resume. I don't think I'd quit, but I'd keep looking for something else and realize you owe this place no allegiances. Indigo Nights [log in to unmask] ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).