I’ll add something to Lucy’s observation, too. Find out if your locality has something like this: http://www.piercecountyhistory.org/ This is a link to the Heritage League of Pierce County, which is a non-profit umbrella organization for all of the heritage sites (not just museums, although there are over thirty museums represented here) in our county. I’m an independent curator, and active in this organization, and this is how I get most of my contracts. Most of these organizations aren’t big enough to hire someone full time (most of them are run by volunteer boards), but they certainly can and do hire someone temporarily to build them an exhibit or help them catalog and preserve a collection and while it’s not a fulltime living, it’s work in the field that pays actual money. At least one of the contracts I’ve gotten this way could have worked into a permanent part-time position had I wanted it to, too. And I have one client who just hired me to build a fourth exhibit for them.

I actually got into museum work after sixteen years as a reference librarian because I was tired of working for big inflexible bureaucracies, and if you think museum jobs are thin on the ground, try to find work as a freelance librarian <g>.

Meg Justus

who’s worked with half a dozen Heritage League member museums in three years so far

I’ll jump in with an additional observation – I’ve come to realize that there are probably oodles of small museums who don’t know how or where to post a job opening in professional circles (and usually don’t even know they should). I live in semi-rural northern California where there are a lot of small museums. All hires that I’ve know of in the last 12 years, except for one that I was involved with a search committee, post openings only locally or use local employment services, and only maybe make the job known to the local State University. Making yourself and your availability known to these museums, in all areas where you are willing to work might not pay off immediately, but might if you keep at it over time. Granted, these aren’t usually very well paid jobs, but they can provide experience and if trained people could somehow do this everywhere it could help small museums, collectively, to do better at caring for our national heritage.

Lucy Sperlin