>All I can say is, we now have seven good people on our staff who started >out as volunteers. >-- >Janis Beth Wilkens >Curator of Collections/Interim Director >Museum of York County >4621 Mt. Gallant Road >Rock Hill, SC 29732 >803-329-2121 Fax: 803-329-5249 >Email: [log in to unmask] That's the one thing I don't understand. My husband, who has a B.A. in biology and another in anthropology, and nearly an M.A. in maritime history/nautical archaeology started out as a volunteer at a children's farmstead and later at a small zoo in Northeastern Kansas. He worked his way up to paid management in both situations (ended up as assistant curator at the zoo), and now he's back to looking at internships because no one in the museum profession seems to think that managing children's programs around animals, managing an assortment of volunteers and staff, designing wild animal exhibits, and keeping exhibits ALIVE translates very well to the "museum field." It's similar training, but, so they say, just "different" enough to not warrant consideration for a museum job. When people say to me that he doesn't have the background for such and such an exhibit or type of work, I just think back to that line in "Jurassic Park", only modified - "Yeah, but when your Pirates of the Caribbean-type ride breaks down, the pirates don't try to eat the tourists!" Tigers and snow leopards and bintorung are prone to do that. I guess my beef is: does the internship and/or job experience have to be SO SPECIFIC to the position? Are our personnel departments not creative enough to understand that some types of experience translate? I understand that I don't have the background to be an art history curator, but I have the background to be a history curator. I realize HE doesn't have the background to be an art history curator, but what about the volunteer co-ordinator positions, or the exhibit design positions, etc.? I'm venting my frustrations here (sorry), but it's annoying that there's a rampant bias against experience that is not "traditional museum" specific. Amy Marshall