Museum Careers Research Articles

Museum careers – so much more than curating collections!

Museum careers – so much more than curating collections!

Opening Up Entry Routes to Our Sector: Reflections on Museums Galleries Scotland's Internship Programme

Museums Galleries Scotland (MGS) is the strategic development body for over 450 museums and galleries, helping them achieve the vision and aims of Going Further: The National Strategy for Scotland's Museums and Galleries. Between 2011 and 2014, MGS developed and managed a programme of 40 internships funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) Skills for the Future Programme. Museums and galleries with vastly differing scales of operations, staffing and governance arrangements applied to host interns either individually or as part of a partnership. An extremely high number of intern applications were received for each agreed role description. MGS intentionally requested applications from people at the start of their museum careers who had not achieved a postgraduate qualification and with low socioeconomic status? This approach responded to critical discourse in the UK questioning whether the traditional pathway of postgraduate education and volunteering met current and future needs, and the call for high quality opportunities for a wider range of people interested in a museums career. It also related to the desire at an international level to develop museums which value the input of members of diverse communities whose living heritage they represent.Important dimensions of the internships were their intensity, duration and financial payments made to interns. The programme supported training provision, peer learning and continuous professional development for the interns themselves, assigned supervisors within the host museums, and external mentors. There was a common structure, with training days and networking opportunities to develop general and museology competencies. Additionally, each internship aided specific competencies including volunteer management, collections care, digital skills, and public programming involving education, outreach and interpretation skills.Through this paper MGS offers reflections upon this programme and its wider relevance for professional capacity building. This partially draws on an externally conducted evaluation report which highlighted the experience of individuals and organisations involved, lessons learnt and recommendations to maximise the legacy of the programme in Scotland and beyond.

Diversifying the museum workforce: the Diversify scheme and its impact on participants' careers

The Diversify positive-action training scheme ran in the United Kingdom from 1998 to 2011. It aimed to increase the accessibility of museum careers to Black, Asian and minority-ethnic individuals. From an initial focus on race, it developed to also offer training to people with disabilities and people from low-income backgrounds. It also included management-level traineeships. This article reports on a longitudinal study, commissioned by the Museums Association as part of its work to mark the end of the Diversify scheme, of the experiences and career progression of people who participated in the scheme as trainees, with a focus on those from minority-ethnic backgrounds. The responses offer insights into people's experiences of training, securing initial employment and career progression. Well over 80% of participants secured initial employment in museums and some 60% of participants responding to a survey are working in museum management or on track to work in museum management. However, perhaps a quarter to a third of participants who gained work in museums will have left the sector within a decade. There remains much to do to improve the diversity of the overall museum workforce.

Museum Careers: A Practical Guide for Students and Novices

Museum Careers: A Practical Guide for Students and Novices

Books

Museum Careers: A Practical Guide for Students and Novices N. Elizabeth Schlatter.

Museum careers: a practical guide for students and novices

Museum careers: a practical guide for students and novices

So You Want to Work in a Museum . . . Guiding the Careers of Future Museum Information Professionals

This paper presents results from twenty-one semi-structured interviews with museum information professionals who were asked about their experiences working with information resources, tools, and technologies in the museum environment. These interviews were analyzed to determine common elements in the participants' career paths, educational backgrounds, and on-the-job experiences. Based on this analysis, we identified five factors that we believe will influence the ability of Library and Information Science (LIS) students to succeed as information professionals in museums. This paper will provide guidance for LIS students who wish to pursue museum careers, answering the question, How do I become an information professional in a museum?

The Factors Affecting Women's Success in Museum Careers: A Discussion of the Reasons More Women Do Not Reach the Top, and of Strategies to Promote their Future Success

This dissertation discusses the factors affecting women’s success in museum careers. It draws on information gathered from interviews with successful women, to supplement existing information and statistics. Women are less successful than men, for they are underrepresented in the top jobs, and have lower average earnings. This is the result of a series of factors which hinder their career progression. Some emanate from the organizational culture of museums, which is often conservative and male-dominated. Others result from the clash between fulfilling family responsibilities and living up to current expectations in the workplace. A final set of factors concerns the typical attitudes and behaviour of individuals: the effects of women’s own self-limitation, and men’s, often unconsciously, pejorative viewpoint. The strategies for overcoming these barriers have also been assessed. Organizations are implementing equal opportunities programmes, including provisions for flexible working; for individuals, awareness is crucial, as well as profiting from networks, mentors, training and career planning. These strategies, however, are currently sufficient to help only the most exceptional women reach the top. The remaining problems are associated with deep-seated social stereotypes, and it will take a concerted effort by those in high status positions to help greater numbers of women overcome them.

“When I Grow Up I'd Like to Work in a Place Like This”: Museum Professionals' Narratives of Early Interest in Museums

ABSTRACTAs part of an exploratory research study, museum professionals were asked to share their stories about pivotal learning experiences in museums. Several offered personal narratives of how they first became interested in museums and started down the path toward careers in museum work, or had their imaginations opened to the possibility of broader life horizons. This group of stories seemed to be grounded in particularly vivid memories and frequently elicited strong emotions in the telling. The narratives are evidence of the impact of early museum experiences on people who later found their way into museum careers, and suggest avenues for further study of the roots of museum careers as well as other ways museums profoundly affect people's lives. The stories can also reveal to the teller, as well as to researchers and others, what stands out in their memories and the importance they assign to those memories. By attending to the thematic and emotional content of these narratives, both narrator and colleagues can find clues about where their beliefs and values really lie and, therefore, where their and the profession's time and resources might be most productively invested.

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Museum Careers and Training: A Professional Guide By Victor J. Danilov. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 1994. 546 pages.Guidelines for Institutional Policies & Planning in Natural History Collections Edited by K. Elaine Hoagland. Washington, DC: The Association of Systematic Collections, 1994.

Museum careers and training: a professional guide

History and Types of Museum Careers and Training The Museum World Museum Staff and Organization Museum Administrative Careers Curatorial and Collection-related Careers Careers in Public Programming Museum Salaries and Benefits Diversity of Training Opportunities Undergraduate Programs Graduate Programs Internships, Fellowships, and Related Programs Continuing Education Programs Directory of Museum Training Programs Courses Undergraduate Degree and Certificate Programs Graduate Degree and Certificate Programs Internships and Related Programs Fellowships and Assistantships Continuing Education Programs Museum Association Programs Programs in Other Countries Selected Bibliography Index

Museum careers in the United States: a non‐system

Museum careers in the United States: a non‐system

Museum careers: ever changing and ever growing

Museum careers: ever changing and ever growing

A Museum Course at Newcomb College

Very simply, this is a one semester, introductory muscology course for both graduates and advanced undergraduates, some of whom do seriously intend museum careers. My own intention with the course, however, is to do more than prepare clerks and otherwise cater to students with “cubbyhole” career plans. On the contrary, I try to stress that a professional preparation properly consists of more than what is, perhaps, all too often the standard (and only) museum fare: ie. considerations of cataloguing, registration methods, documentation and authentication, history of collecting, conservation and restoration, etc. While all these topics are, to be sure, seriously considered, we attempt to go further and suggest that, in fact, almost any meaningful kind of human activity of knowledge can somehow be positively utilized in the course of a museum career. The students are encouraged to direct their bright, imaginative minds to thinking of “the museum” not as something limited but, in fact, almost unlimited from the standpoint of what it can do—or better, of what they, as potential museum people, can do for it.

The Role of the University in Education Towards Museum Careers

The Role of the University in Education Towards Museum Careers

Preparation for Professional Museum Careers

Preparation for Professional Museum Careers