Dear List,

I have a question for those who are involved in living history sites,
and I'm sure it's an old problem that you have dealt with before. I
work at two "living history" sites where we have historically
furnished spaces that contain a mix of period artifacts, modern
reproductions, and modern objects. The historically furnished houses and
other structures are often used for various domestic and other
demonstrations, and we are constantly battling about which objects can
be used (i.e. which dishes to use, which chair to sit on, which table to
set things on, which woodworking tools to use, etc.). As you can guess,
our period objects are at peril under this system. Like all museums, we
don't have funding to furnish our "living history" spaces entirely
with quality reproductions; most of our period pieces are donations
acquired many years ago.

What I want to do is to philosophically separate our objects into two
collections, a "museum" collection and a "living history"
collection, although they will be mixed in the historically furnished
spaces. The museum collection will consist of our period objects and
will generally be "hands off", and guidelines for handling and
moving such items will be regulated. Use of our "living history"
collection will be more lenient and these will be the tools and other
objects used for public demonstrations. My problem is that I want to
devise a system that will be easy for our staff interpreters and
volunteers to understand so that when working they will readily know
what things they can handle and use. Our current system of just saying
use this but don't use that, or providing a list, just doesn't work.
I think we really need something more visual and apparent to anyone
regardless of their knowledge of our collections. Any ideas? Thank you
in advance.

John Peterson
Heritage Museums & Programs
Jackson County Parks & Recreation

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