Working towards Active Collections: A report from the Maine Active Collections Forum

By Hannah Kirkpatrick

In June, Vermont Historical Society staff and members of our Activating 21st Century Local History cohort were honored with the opportunity to speak about our work at the Maine Active Collections Forum.   

Held in the Salon of the Raymond Fogler Library at the University of Maine, Orono, this full-day forum offered ample conversation and deep thought about the practicalities of implementing Active Collections principles into the work of local historical societies, libraries, and museums. The forum was attended by both in-person and virtual attendees, accommodating those in the furthest corners of the state who are interested in improving their approaches to collections.  

The day started with welcoming remarks from Daisy Singh, Dean of University of Maine Libraries. Patricia Burdick and Paige Lilly, independent museum consultants, spoke about why Active Collections is a necessary approach for collecting institutions in Maine and why it is especially necessary now. Libby Bischof, Executive Director of the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, also spoke about how Active Collections and a focus on educational access has guided her work with the Osher map collections.  

Our Vermont delegation took part in a panel discussion on our work with the Activating 21st Century Local History Training Program. VHS Director of Service and Outreach Eileen Corcoran explained how we have not only spent much of the past 7 years assessing our own collections for meaning and use, but also spreading an understanding of Active Collections around the state of Vermont through workshops and training for local historical societies. I discussed my work on the project thus far, including the project components like the Online Resource Center and the extensive reading and research I continue to do so I can best assist the members of our cohort. I also shared details of the summer projects being completed by the three cohort organizations not represented in our panel. 

Cheryl Casey, President of the Waterbury Historical Society, explained how they have integrated Active Collections into their 5-year strategic plan and discussed their summer project to update their inventory and database. Martha Howard, Director of the Thetford Historical Society, spoke about the challenges her organization has faced since 2017 completing updates to the Hughes Barn Museum, including floods and the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite those challenges, volunteers from Thetford have already done great work in developing new exhibits. Their next goal is to reassess and rearrange the collections to make space for better storage, care, and use.  

After returning from lunch on campus, we split into breakout groups and discussed barriers to Active Collections work, what was needed to get past those barriers, and how larger institutions in Maine could support the institutions that attendees represented. Attendees were grouped based on the size of their respective institutions and their familiarity with Active Collections prior to attending the forum.  

I listened in with the “small institutions, little familiarity with Active Collections” group, where heard about the familiar challenges of money, time, administrative support, and knowledge of collections care, all of which can be especially difficult to overcome at all-volunteer organizations like local historical societies. Projects like the Activating 21st Century Local History Training Program aim to address these challenges, and we would love to see similar programs pop up in places like Maine, where there is already grassroots support for Active Collections at all levels of the field.  
Rainey Tisdale, an independent museum consultant and co-founder & co-author of Active Collections (and consultant to our program), closed out the day with a summary of the breakout groups and answered questions from attendees. A veteran cheerleader of Active Collections work, Rainey was the perfect person to wrap up the day and invigorate us to head home and get to work.  

Vermont Historical Society is proud to be a leader in helping museums, local historical societies, and libraries around the country to activate their collections. We want to extend a huge thank you to our colleagues in Maine for inviting us to speak at this event! It was an invaluable opportunity to think creatively about applying collections care standards and developing new ones better suited to the state of the field.