Linda Tanaka: What a situation to find yourself - my sincere sympathies! I have been following the convolutions of the strike with great interest over the past months. I do hope the redefinitions of positions can be done humanely, but with the Board you are dealing with - well, I won't hold my breath. Collections managers - I won't go over the available literature, as I'm sure you have covered this. One bit you might have missed is the 'job book' at Employment Canada. When I was working for the CMC (back in the 70's) Employment interviewed of sampling of employees at the ethnology division, and used the data to compile a job outline for use in Employment Canada offices. It probably included the collections manager, albeit under a different name. It hopefully has been updated since the 70's. Not the most professional of sources, but one your Board would accept. As you have gathered I'm sure, roles and job descriptions in Canadian museums have changed drastically over the past 20 years. The primary causes of this change have been the introduction of information technology, reduced budgets, and a broadened mandate for most museums. One job description to become more common during this period has been that of the collections manager. This is probably different in other countries, but I believe has been the case here. I currently teach a course in 'archaeological collections management' here at SFU. Back in the 70's a collections manager could have been someone who literally worked with the collections - physically moving them about. A.k.a. 'storesman' in those non-PC days. Typically, the 'storesman' was at the bottom of the org chart, under a curator and registrar. As duties have concatenated due to budgetary restrictions and increased workload due to the addition of new projects resulting from the broadened mandate, job descriptions have become longer, more inclusive and cover more complex duties. Many museums are simplifying their org charts by eliminating entire levels. Thus a three or four tiered curatorial department is now two tiered with half the staff. (And usually tiwce the work - but that is another story). Entire functions, eg. research, have been dropped and contracted out to 'guest curators'. What seems to be happening is that all duties previously performed by a department are being compressed into one or two job descriptions. But rather than refer to the new super-job by the job title at the top (eg curator), job titles are being selected from the bottom. This is probably being done to keep a cap on salaries. The list of duties you presented in your first message: (- be in charge of all research activities (directing what is to be done and handling the data produced); -data processing and all data base management like storage, archiving and uploading to national databases; -all activities within the storage vaults (supervising access and activities); -security for the whole building (determining who has access to the collections and that the building is physically secure from intruders); -exhibit maintenance (may include directing teams of trained cleaners) - responsible for conservation (not active but preventive and not physically doing the work but determining priorities and making the collection accessible to the conservators)). Wow! what a list. This is possible for someone with a small collection, or curator responsible for a large collection with a large staff reporting to them. It is physically, emotionally and intellectually impossible for one person to actually do a good job at all of that at a museum with a collection of a size the Vancouver Museum has, with a staff the size of the one currently being proposed for the VM . While I sympathize with the financial difficulties the VM is facing, to 'solve' the problem by asking someone to do the impossible is -setting them up for failure and an excuse to fire them for incompetance. -endangering the collections safety & security. -failing to meet the basic mandate of the VM. It seems to me the Board has fundamentally misunderstood the mandate of the museum. These are my musings - I hope I have not offended any collections managers out there. They reflect what I have seen here in Canada, coloured perhaps by a deeprooted cynicism. ___________________________________________________________________ Barbara J. Winter Department of Archaeology Simon Fraser University Canada V5A 1S6 tel: (604) 291-3325 fax: (604) 291-5666 email: [log in to unmask] ___________________________________________________________________