[Nhcoll-l] Museum Storage Facilities and Furniture online course starts September 3

[Helen Alten]

MS 202: Museum Storage Facilities and Furniture
Instructor: Lori Benson
Dates: Sep 3 to Sep 27, 2013
Location: online at www.museumclasses.org

Description:
The building and storage furniture are your first line of protection for 
the most valuable asset in your museum - the collection. Museum Storage 
Facilities and Furniture concentrates on building systems and furniture 
for storing and protecting collections. Topics include environmental 
controls, insulation, floor coatings and predicting space requirements. 
Museum Storage also compares commercial and homemade furniture and 
provides a blueprint for planning the redesign of your facility. Storage 
philosophy, construction requirements, safety and security and planning 
are covered. A unit details how commercial museum-quality cabinetry is 
constructed. Blueprints are provided for high-quality, homemade cabinets.

Logistics:
Participants in Museum Storage Facilities and Furniture work at 
individual paces through five sections. Instructor Helen Alten is 
available at scheduled times during the course for email support. 
Resources include forums and scheduled online chats, PowerPoint 
lectures, reading materials and lecture notes and links to relevant web 
sites.

Museum Storage Facilities and Furniture runs four weeks. To learn more 
about the course, please go to 
http://www.collectioncare.org/training/trol_classes_ms202.html If you 
have trouble please contact Helen Alten at helen at collectioncare.org

The Instructor:
Lori Benson is an independent museum professional based in Maine. Ms. 
Benson has a B.A. in biology and a Masters of Library and Informational 
Science specializing in rare books and archives. She started working at 
the Minnesota Historical Society in 1990, finishing a grant funded 
position as the Preservation Outreach Representative. After a series of 
project positions at the Historical Society, including Assistant Moving 
Coordinator, she was hired by the Science Museum of Minnesota as their 
first Collections Manager in 1994. She was Project Director in the 
Research and Collections Division for the new facility planning and 
move. The project was published as Moving the Mountain, the Science 
Museum of Minnesota Guide to Moving Collections. In addition to her 
position at the Science Museum, Ms. Benson was adjunct faculty at 
Dominican University/College of St. Catherine Department of Library 
Science teaching Preservation and Conservation of Library Materials and 
Archives Administration in 2000-2001. In 2003, she was hired by Texas 
Natural Science Center, University of Texas at Austin (formerly Texas 
Memorial Museum) to de-accession their entire cultural collection. She 
continues to be a University of Texas Affiliate. She has taught museum 
studies to undergraduates and given many talks and lectures on 
preservation, deaccessioning, project planning and moving. She is a 
member of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History 
Collections and the Registrars' Committee of the American Association of 
Museums. In her second life, she teaches handweaving.

-- 
Brad Bredehoft for Helen Alten
Northern States Conservation Center
www.collectioncare.org
www.museumclasses.org