The Fort MacArthur Museum has been operated entirely by volunteers.
We are located inside of a WWI seacoast gun battery in a Los Angeles
City park.  We have no formal agreement with the City to be there, and
have a museum in spite of the Dept. of Rec & Parks.  We raise several
thousand dollars a year to operate the museum. We have been at it for
over ten years.  We have become something like amateur authorities concerning
the history of the Harbor Defenses of Los Angeles.  We will soon be getting
our first paid staff, a "Historic Site Coordinator."

For a shoestring operation such as ours, we have found that membership in the
AMA is completely a waste of our hard earned money.  Museum News almost
never has
anything pertaining to us, and is full of advertisements for items and
services
we could never afford.

Once on the AMA mailing list, we get all sorts of appeals to send them even
more
money for various subcommittees that deal in areas that are far above our
level.
Instead of sending ten dollars to the AMA Conservation Committee, we could
use that
money to buy a few pairs of white gloves to for the archive room. (The
archive room
is the former enlisted men's latrine, by the way.)

Discussions on ethics, and exhibits for minorities and physically
challenged are
probably important, but we would like to know where we can get cheap
display cabinets,
how to keep the bugs out of our wool uniform collection, and how to keep
that fungus
from growing on the leather boots in the World War I display over in the
powder handling room.

The Association for State and Local History people, on the other hand, have
many practical down to earth, "we can do that" type of publications.  The
Technical Bulletins such as, "Displays for Small Museums" are very useful.

I imagine that there are hundreds of operations out there such as ours. The
AMA
appears to be ignoring a large sector of the museum community.

Two cents, from the bottom half of the museum world....

Cheers
Sam Stokes
Fort MacArthur Museum
San Pedro, CA