Dear Ms. Uyehara,
I hope my response will be of some consolation to you.
We, too, have no visitor services staff to cover our museum floor operation as our visitor services deals only with ticketing.
Our staff of nine (five fulltime and 4 parttime) have exhibit and youth related programming responsibilities, covering three exhibit (Children's Discovery Center, Cavern exhibit, and Ice Age/Dino Hall) themed areas and supervising a team of 30-40 youth to cover the exhibits on weekends and holidays.
About five years ago, we decided to divide our responsibilities to the museum exhibits and related visitor experience into teams. Each team rotates their time at the "welcome desk," one hour at time. Each team has a full-time coordinator working 5 days a week, and a specialist working 5 days overlapping on the necessary days. Some of the teams have 2-3 specialists working the equivilent of 5 days to make sure the exhibit are covered.
I am responsible for the monthly and daily schedule during the school year. Around the 15th of each month, each staff writes on the calender what days they need off as long as they have an agreement from their teammates to cover for them. This allows the necessary flexibility for staff and their professional and personal needs and gives staff complete responsibility to and ownership for their exhibit as their exhibit must be covered 7 days a week. I leave it up to the teams to decide who covers what days.
I'll try to "paperclip" a sample of their daily schedule and the monthly. I am responsible for the daily schedule during the school year and the teams are responsible for their own daily schedule on the weekends and holidays because the youth are not in school at this time. The daily schedules include what demos or areas need to be covered and have one hour time increments so staff/volunteers rotate through the exhibits. Many museums do it this way.
If you have any other questions or require further correspondance, please contact me at [log in to unmask] By the way, where are you located? I've been through South Dakota many times on my way up to Montana where my sister lives.
Sincerely,
Donna Saul
Exhibit Program Director
I ask -----Original Message-----
From: Ruby Rogers [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 1999 9:17 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: FW: Staffing for Holidays
Donna,
Thought you might be able to assist this individual.
Thanks,
Ruby
-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Vera Uyehara
Sent: Monday, July 05, 1999 7:08 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Staffing for Holidays
My question to the assembled experts on these listservs is: How do you
staff holidays at your center/museum? To give you a little background,
here is our current dilemma.
The Dakota Science Center is a young science center (less than 6 years
old), and we are about to move into our first facility that will be open
regular hours for the public. Even without a primary physical location,
we have operated numerous outreach programs, including developing and
travelling exhibits on a small scale. Our staff at this time is
completely program related, funded through grant funds from a variety of
sources. Many of the staff and many board members have volunteered in
the past at our public festivals of exhibits, which have usually been
unrelated to programs. Many of these past events have been on holidays.
We now have about 20 full and part time staff people, who work regular
work days - 9-5 so to speak - with variations of evenings, week-ends,
etc based on their specific program requirements. All of our outreach
activities are program related at the moment, except the exhibit
festivals, so all the camps, workshops, classes, etc are covered by our
excellent staff.
When we move into our new building and begin to have open hours on
week-ends, holidays, etc., we won't have any staff particularly assigned
to working the exhibit hall, or staffing the New Year's Eve community
activities (i.e. the local community First Night Celebrations), Memorial
Day, Thanksgiving Day, Labor Day, July 4, etc.. I am expecting to have
a rotating schedule of staff for each holiday time period we are open or
have a public event at our facility. An added note is that all the new
exhibits to be developed are related to particular programs, so tending
to these exhibits, evaluating them, assisting the public in interacting
with them is a reasonable expectation of staff funded through these
grants. However, there aren't enough hours or people to have JUST those
individuals do everything in the exhibit hall, even if we include
volunteers.
I would ideally like to have an all-staff requirement to work the
exhibit hall for a certain amount of time each week, each month,
whatever, supplemented by volunteers. Additionally, I'd like to require
all staff to be available for holiday open hours, on a rotating basis,
with some peak times needing to use everyone. For this time spent in
the exhibit hall, I would expect to allow some time off to the staff
person; however not a one to one hourly compensation of time.
How do each of you manage this? Without a dedicated visitor services
staff (yet), with a small staff with too much to do already, I am
struggling for the best policy to implement.
--
Vera L.Y. Uyehara [log in to unmask]
Executive Director (701) 795-8500 (Voice)
Dakota Science Center (701) 739-3150 (cell)
P.O. Box 5023 (701) 777-2339 (FAX)
Grand Forks, ND 58206
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