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Re: Museums and documents



Before my current position, I spent three years as Regional Archivist for eight counties in southeastern New York. The Regional Archivist positions in New York state were designed, among other things, to provide support and advice for anyone running an archive. We identified about 300 archival repositories in the southeastern region, a lot of which were local historical societies. The majority of the organizations we identified were collecting both paper and 3-D objects, and the majority didn't have money for much of any paid staff, let alone either a professional curator or a professional archivist. Most of the work was being done by volunteers. They either made it up as they went along, learned by reading, and/or came to training sessions, including the ones offered through my office, that were geared for people without the technical background to give them information on how to handle archival collections. So in many cases, the question is not whether the society should hire a professional archivist or curator first, but how to get training for the volunteers who are doing their best to carry out collection management with no formal background.



Christine Crawford-Oppenheimer
Special Collections Librarian/Archivist
Culinary Institute of America
433 Albany Post Road
Hyde Park, NY  12538-1499
(914) 451-1757
c_crawfo@culinary.edu

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