[Nhcoll-l] Collection management: trade or profession?

Tue Feb 27 14:50:11 EST 2024

As the industrial revolution took hold, there arose between the classical "professions" (law, medicine, clergy) and the established "trades" (carpenter, blacksmith, butcher etc) a new category of "managerial professions" - accountant, estimator, process manager etc. - from which we derive modern-day positions like CEO, CFO etc.

Simultaneously there emerged a class of "technicians," whose jobs were linked to the safe use of specific technologies - mechanics, X-Ray operators, pilots, ship captains, truck and train drivers, etc. In some cases, such as ship captain, these resembled the classical professions in that you didn't get to legally captain a ship until you'd passed navigation and other maritime exams. In others, such as driving a vehicle over a certain size, you just needed a license to upgrade something (driving a car) you already knew how to do so as to legally operate a certain defined class of machines.

Finally, there arose the "creative professions," like photographer, wedding planner, chef and so on, in which you needed no qualification at all to get started and earn money.

Collection managers use various technologies, and for some - like working in labs or in the field with students - they need certification. They do not usually work under fixed contracts, nor do they perform iterative and quantifiable tasks such as moving a cargo from point A to point B. Some of their work, like photography and writing museum texts, is creative. They thus defy classification in any of the senses above, and the problem is compounded by the fact that many work for universities or non-profit museums that have no cross-disciplinary job grades and promotion mechanisms such as you find in government workplaces.

It might be possible to create some kind of "professional qualification" for CMs, but in the USA at least, unless it was nationally recognized and legally required, there would be no consequences for an institution that ignored it when hiring someone. Like Heather (and myself - MSc in Museum Leadership) you might spend a lot of time and effort to get a qualification that doesn't actually help you get the job you want.

CMs are rich in virtue, though, which is its own reward.

Paul Callomon
Collection Manager, Malacology and General Invertebrates

________________________________

Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia
callomon at ansp.org<mailto:callomon at ansp.org> Tel 215-405-5096 - Fax 215-299-1170

________________________________
From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> on behalf of Heather Ouellette <houellette at fau.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2024 12:30 PM
To: Douglas Yanega <dyanega at gmail.com>; nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] filling the gap (Re: Collection management: trade or profession?)

External.

As someone who only recently finally got a full time job in museum collections after years of internships and part time jobs, an apprenticeship program or at least more information on how to get into museum collections work would be great. I wish I had known in grad school about a specific museum studies degree. Instead, I went for a degree in paleontology with a thesis in fossil stabilization. Then I struggled for years to get an actual job in a museum.

Is there also possibly a glut of people trying to get into museum collections work, but there aren’t enough positions to go around?

Heather Ouellette

Research Collections Manager

FAU Harbour Branch

772-224-2206

From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of Douglas Yanega
Sent: Tuesday, 27 February 2024 10:49 am
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] filling the gap (Re: Collection management: trade or profession?)

EXTERNAL EMAIL : Exercise caution when responding, opening links, or opening attachments.

On 2/27/24 6:39 AM, Shoobs, Nate wrote:

 I think what John articulated here is correct but perhaps unfortunate.

I would love it if there were an international guild of museum curatorial staff that had an apprenticeship system. (Or, alternatively, if collections management were professionalized to a greater degree and we became similar to university professors, art museum curators, or librarians.) But neither scenario is currently the case.

Not currently the case, but there are things that somewhat fill that void. At the risk of a little institutional self-promotion, allow me to post something from one of our campus student organizations:

"The Natural History Museum Club at UCR is a local branch of the Natural History Collections Care Network. Our activities include volunteering in collections on campus (such as the geology collection, entomology museum, and herbarium), museum science workshops, and tours and/or field trips to museums on and off-campus.

The purposes of the Natural History Museum Club at UCR organization shall be:

I. To provide multidisciplinary education, training, access, and opportunities for museum work to students which would otherwise be inaccessible or limited in scope

II. To interface with a nationwide network of like clubs on other university campuses

III. To facilitate interactions between undergraduates, graduates, staff, and faculty in fields utilizing natural history collections

IV. To further the goals of campus natural history museums"

I see from the NHCCN website (https://thenhccn.wixsite.com/nhccn/clubs) that at present there are only seven affiliated chapters, but it's a fairly new initiative, and hopefully other institutions will sign on. Part of that issue is promoting awareness of the organization, and as I am one of the campus advisers to our chapter, I suppose that promoting it here in this thread is acceptable and appropriate. These clubs are very much intended to fill the gap at institutions that have campus collections but do not have courses (let alone a degree) in collection management. Our chapter has been active for only a few years, but it has already helped a number of students, as well as collections. The last four museum technicians we've hired have all been students in our campus chapter, and I think the herbarium and geology collection on campus have also hired NHMC members. This gets us very motivated technicians, and gives them something tangible for their CVs, plus the potential for a very meaningful letter of recommendation, should they need one. I encourage people to consider looking into joining this network, and I can vouch for its benefits. It may not be much, but it's a positive step, for sure. Given time and a critical mass of members, I can imagine it eventually growing into another force for advocacy, which would be a good thing.

Peace,

--

Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum

Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega

phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)

             https://faculty.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html

  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness

        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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