That is one of the problems of state and county owned facilities, they don't see or understand the problem. They think it is like any other state/county owned facility or space. I once worked for a county museum in which the county facilities management department didn't understand why they couldn't make maintenance fixes on historic structures the same way they could to other county buildings (office space, fire department buildings, etc.).

At all of the museums (5) I have worked for, maintenance personnel (county/city or private) have had to check in with either the security chief, the on-site maintenance supervisor or appropriate museum staff (director, curator). Staff was always the ones who let them in and maintained supervision of them. They always had to let us know when they were done, so that we could resecure the area. Now, we didn't always have someone sitting in the room watching they every move (have worked for small staff institutions), but generally they were in areas that required them passing someone's desk/office or we would check on them periodically.



-----Original Message-----
From: Mandy Langfald <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Mon, Jan 25, 2010 6:24 pm
Subject: Security Access

We have recently moved into a new off site storage facility. This new
facility is State owned whereas the previous one was a leased building.
Now that we are in a State owned building we are having a battle over
access. Our A&I Maintenance department (to the highest level) believe
that everyone in Maintenance has an absolute right to have swipe card
access into the space and that they do not need to notify Museum staff
or have Museum staff accompany them inside our collections space. As you
can imagine the Collections staff is completely up in arms over the
situation. Nothing we say about standard museum practice or the
possibility of losing our accreditation has any impact as the head of
the department insists that “HE KNOWS” all museums let maintenance
people have complete and unsupervised access to storage, and that we are
over reacting complainers. Soooooo could you please let me know if at
your museum if the maintenance staff has free reign in your storage or
if you limit access, and to whom do you give access?

I appreciate any help you can offer. Feel free to contact me off list.



Mandy Langfald
Curator of Collection
Wyoming State Museum
307-777-7033
[log in to unmask]

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