By Sean Blinn, AASLH Small Museums Committee Chair
Small museums can be some of the most rewarding places to work. We share stories, we keep local history alive, and in so doing we create a sense of belonging and community. We provide answers when people want to know where we came from, and when they want to use that knowledge to understand where we are going. We are places of connection, where we want everyone to feel at home.
Our work matters, now more than ever before.
A lot of that work is centered on our collections, which provide a tangible link to our past. But we are so much more than the community attic; we use objects to tell stories and make the past come alive. Our collections may not be as expansive as those of our larger peers, but that doesn’t make them any less important, and it doesn’t make our work any less important.
One of the challenges small museums face is staffing; we hear that a lot in the Small Museums Committee. Without a large staff, there are fewer co-workers to learn from, and it can be tough to get to events to meet other people from small museums and learn from each other.
That is why AASLH and the Small Museums Committee are pleased to present the second virtual summit for small museums on November 12-13, with the theme “Small Museums, Important Collections.” The program features sessions about small museums and collections, presented by people from small museums. The full program is online here so you can see what the summit will include, with sessions focused on deaccessioning, disaster preparedness, crafting collections management policies, and mission statements, and much more.
This summit will not be like other online events you have attended. We have heard feedback that as much as people find enormous value in conference sessions, people also enjoy getting to talk with other attendees, meeting folks in similar organizations and circumstances around the country, facing the same challenges and brainstorming creative solutions on how to preserve and interpret history in meaningful ways on a shoestring budget.
With that in mind, we made major changes to the virtual summit format. We are trying a lot of new things (and there may be glitches along the way, so be gentle with us!). We scheduled fewer presenter-led sessions than at the small museums summit in 2023, but added extended times for conversation and discussion. Many of our sessions will feature extended breakouts. So if you’re interested in deaccessioning, for example, you won’t just hear from some experienced professionals (though you will); you will also be able to find and talk with other small museum people interested in refining their collections and can discuss the common issues and opportunities.
We have built time into the schedule for informal networking, and are introducing a platform called SpatialChat for these events. It’s not a conferencing platform like Zoom; rather, it’s a platform for virtual conversation. It is designed to look and feel like the hallway conversations, the sidebars, and casual exchanges that we value when we can attend a conference in person. These moments are always a challenge to re-create online, but I think Spatial Chat is as close as I have seen to replicating the in-person experience.
This second virtual summit for small museums promises to be as educational as its predecessor. We have some of the best presenters around, with content for small museums, created by small museum professionals. We hope to see you at the summit, and we are confident it will be a rewarding experience!
Learn more and register for the Small Museums, Important Collections summit here.
