The Sunday (12/28) Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced that Atlanta's Fernbank Museum has recently been accredited by the American Association of Museums.

According to the news story, AAM accreditation "gives an institution increased public credibility that attracts volunteers, visitors, contributions and traveling exhibitions."

Sounds like a prescription for success.

Does anyone know which rail museums have gone this route and which ones are working on it?

--Malcolm

malcolmrcampbell@cs.com

The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania is actively working toward AAM Accreditation, tentatively scheduled for 2005. We have never been accredited previously. It is part of an agency-wide initative to get more of Pennsylvania's historic sites and museums accredited (the RRMPA is owned by the Commonwealth of PA and administered by the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission), or for those previously accredited, passed through subsequent acceditation. We hope to showcase many of our accomplishments toward this goal at the 2006 ARM Convention, which we have agreed to host.

During an accreditation review, all levels of museum organization are carefully assessed, from administration, to education, to collections management, etc. If the museum is found deficient in a particular area, their review can be "tabled" for six months or longer. Not all of the work needs to be finished for the initial review--the Museum must demonstrate that they are working toward fixing or improving certain areas with a concrete plan in place. Many of those "promises" must be fixed during the follow-up subsequent accrediation visit 6-10 years later. AAM has accreditation materials available for any organization interested; I believe Erik Ledbetter of Rypn works for AAM and perhaps he might comment further on particulars regarding the program, or refer you to the "official" AAM contact.

I've heard that CSRM was AAM Accredited and Seashore Trolley Museum was accredited. Not sure if either report is true; perhaps representatives from either of those organizations might be able to chime in here to confirm or deny.

It is worth any Museum's (railroad or otherwise) efforts to become accredited because it improves the institution's stature within the Museum community, opens up new opportunities and avenues for funding at higher levels, and raises the bar on professional standards at the institution.

K.R. Bell

> The Sunday (12/28) Atlanta
> Journal-Constitution announced that
> Atlanta's Fernbank Museum has recently been
> accredited by the American Association of
> Museums.

> According to the news story, AAM
> accreditation "gives an institution
> increased public credibility that attracts
> volunteers, visitors, contributions and
> traveling exhibitions."

> Sounds like a prescription for success.

> Does anyone know which rail museums have
> gone this route and which ones are working
> on it?

> --Malcolm

> During an accreditation review, all levels
> of museum organization are carefully
> assessed, from administration, to education,
> to collections management, etc. If the
> museum is found deficient in a particular
> area, their review can be "tabled"
> for six months or longer. Not all of the
> work needs to be finished for the initial
> review--the Museum must demonstrate that
> they are working toward fixing or improving
> certain areas with a concrete plan in place.
> Many of those "promises" must be
> fixed during the follow-up subsequent
> accrediation visit 6-10 years later.

Kurt's summary above is right on. Accreditation is not a rubber stamp; it's the end of a long-term process of self-study and peer review and a very significant badge of achievement. Preparing for accreditation is a major committment, but going through the process can help a museum sharpen its game in nearly every aspect of its operations.

AAM has
> accreditation materials available for any
> organization interested; I believe Erik
> Ledbetter of Rypn works for AAM and perhaps
> he might comment further on particulars
> regarding the program, or refer you to the
> "official" AAM contact.

Yes, I do work for AAM, and happen to sit in the middle of the department that runs the accreditation program. There's a lot of great information at

http://www.aam-us.org/programs/accreditation/accred.cfm

> I've heard that CSRM was AAM Accredited and
> Seashore Trolley Museum was accredited. Not
> sure if either report is true; perhaps
> representatives from either of those
> organizations might be able to chime in here
> to confirm or deny.

Only one full-time railroad museum currently holds accreditation--Colorado Historical Society, Georgetown Loop Historic Mining & Railroad Park. This is a little bit of a ringer, becuase the accreditation is held more by the parent organization, CHS, than the Georgetown Loop in specific. THe San Diego Model Railroad Museum just triumphantly completed the road to accreditation, and shared their experience recently at ARM's western regional meeting. Among museums with comparable types of collections, there are a number of accredited maritime and air and space museums.

You can see the whole list here:

http://www.aam-us.org/programs/accredit ... accred.cfm

> It is worth any Museum's (railroad or
> otherwise) efforts to become accredited
> because it improves the institution's
> stature within the Museum community, opens
> up new opportunities and avenues for funding
> at higher levels, and raises the bar on
> professional standards at the institution.

Hear, hear.

An invaluable first set of steps for many museums is to participate in AAM's Museum Assessment Program, MAP. MAP is an set of intensive self-studies with a capstone peer review by an expert visting reviewer from a comparable institution. THere are several different MAPs, including Institutional Assessment (IMAP), Collections Management Assessment (CMAP), Public Dimension Assessment (PDA), and Governance Assessment (GMAP). The cost is based on your museum budget, and aid has been avilable from IMLS to underwrite MAP in the past. For more informaiton, see

http://www.aam-us.org/programs/map/map.cfm?

If anyone has any questions about MAP, Accreditaiton, or other AAM programs, please be in touch and I will personally refer you to my colleagues with pleasure.


eledbetter@rypn.org

> I've heard that CSRM was AAM Accredited and
> Seashore Trolley Museum was accredited. Not
> sure if either report is true; perhaps
> representatives from either of those
> organizations might be able to chime in here
> to confirm or deny.

CSRM is not accredited; it had the initial MAP survey about two years ago. That is one step-stone on the usual (but not required) route toward accreditation.

Seashore held accreditation and experienced problems when it came to doing a 10-year review for continued status. The organization felt that the reviewer was applying values more associated with traditional museums and not museums of large outdoor objects. This was a painful event for Seashore and it protested to AAM.

An end result for the Seashore experience was that AAM supported the ARM in creating "Recommended Practices for Railway Museums." This document was written to serve two audiences; one was railway museums, the other is reviewers looking at railway museums. It was written to point museums in the correct direction and it was written to note the differences between railway museums and more traditional museums. Similar documents were prepared for science museums and children's museums for the same reasons. Since Recommended Practices appeared I have heard that both the airplane and boat museum groups have looked at preparing similar documents.

Accreditation can be a long and expensive process as a museum organization brings it self into compliance with the accepted values. Minnesota Historical Society - even through its Executive Director served a term as President of AAM - declined to divert monies into accreditation.

After being accredited a museum must pay an annual fee that pays for the accreditation review. The Small Museum Administrators group got AAM to spread this fee out over the life of the 10-year accreditation instead of a singe up-front payment. If I recall correctly this is a $1000 per year fee; the AAM says that the fee does not cover all of the costs of review and granting accreditation.

AAM acknowledges that may worthy museums may not be accredited and that accreditation should not be used for valuing for grants. But many granting agencies use accreditation as a yardstick for valuing organizations.

Brian Norden
member Board of Directors
Assoc. of Ry Musuems

> The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania is
> actively working toward AAM Accreditation,
> tentatively scheduled for 2005. We have
> never been accredited previously. It is part
> of an agency-wide initative to get more of
> Pennsylvania's historic sites and museums...<<

Great news! I know it's a hard row to hoe and requires the active participation of everyone. Hope it comes through on schedule!!

--Malcolm

malcolmrcampbell@cs.com

> An invaluable first set of steps for many
> museums is to participate in AAM's Museum
> Assessment Program, MAP. MAP is an set of
> intensive self-studies with a capstone peer
> review by an expert visting reviewer from a
> comparable institution. THere are several
> different MAPs, including Institutional
> Assessment (IMAP), Collections Management
> Assessment (CMAP), Public Dimension
> Assessment (PDA), and Governance Assessment
> (GMAP). The cost is based on your museum
> budget, and aid has been avilable from IMLS
> to underwrite MAP in the past. For more
> informaiton, see <<

Like CAP, these are good programs and they get one ready for accreditation. I think some RR museums have trouble doing some of these because they require museums to be open (I think) at least 120 days a year, something that doesn't happen with weekend-only operations. While accreditation isn't a rubber stamp, the process can be very helpful and the result does serve as a validation of everything one learned (and implemented) during the process.

--Malcolm


malcolmrcampbell@cs.com

>>The organization felt that the reviewer was
applying values more associated with traditional museums and not museums of large outdoor objects. This was a painful event for Seashore and it protested to AAM. >"Recommended Practices for Railway Museums." This document was written to serve two audiences; one was railway museums, the other is reviewers looking at railway museums. It was written to point museums in the correct direction and it was
written to note the differences between railway museums and more traditional museums. >Accreditation can be a long and expensive
process as a museum organization brings it
self into compliance with the accepted
values. Minnesota Historical Society - even
through its Executive Director served a term
as President of AAM - declined to divert
monies into accreditation.<<

This is a legitimate point. The wisdom of spending money for the accreditation process needs to be balanced out against its benefits for an institution. There are, perhaps, other ways for rail museums to participate in and be accepted by the entire museum community as well as prospective donors.

--Malcolm



malcolmrcampbell@cs.com

Depends on your technicalities, but the National Museum of American History, which includes the new transportation exhibit, *is* on the list. (but not the Smithsonian "affiliate", the B&O Railroad Museum....)

A look through the list will reveal some quite curious listings. The listing for Maryland includes, among other sites, an underwater German U-Boat preserve and a couple sites I *know* for a fact are not open 120+ days a year. It appears that using a blanket administration--i.e. a county parks administration or state historical society that qualifies as a whole--is an interesting technique used to include sites that otherwise would have no hope of being accredited--that underwater U-Boat being an example. Might it be easier for, as an example, the Pennsylvania Historic & Museum Commission to qualify all its properties as a group (including the RR Museum of Pa.) rather than as a case-by-case basis? How come one administration can do it and others can't?

Of course, the bigger picture is whether such accredition earns its keep. Of course, with Erik working for them, he's certainly going to defend his discipline and employer, but at the same time I would have to question who, if anyone besides the CSRM, NCTM, and RRMPa would actually *benefit* from such accredition. In a sense, it's like tacking more college degree letters after you name--maybe it'll help get you a gran; maybe that and five bucks will get you a Starbucks cuppa joe. What does it mean, positively and/or negatively, to the average visitors, not the TRAIN/ARM types?

Examples: would accredition mean it would now take an "act of God" to lease a steam locomotive to an operator, or even to restore it to operation at all? Can it make recruiting volunteers more difficult, as they would have to take an archiving/preservation seminar before being allowed to do or touch anything?



LNER4472-NOSPAM-@bcpl.net

What does it mean,
> positively and/or negatively, to the average
> visitors, not the TRAIN/ARM types?

What accreditation "means" is that the museum has already achieved or is on the brink of achieving a high and consistent level of quality in its programs and administration.

It means that the organization has an acceptably stable governance structure and is likely to be around for the long haul; it means the organization has a collections plan to guide accessioning and deaccessioning; it means the organization has some kind of convervation plan for its artifacts, it means it has organized education and outreach, and so on.

It is these real-world qualities which attract volunteeers, donors, and visitors, not the post-facto "AAM Accredited" label that honors those qualities. And of course, you can cultivate all these qualities without pursuing the accreditation process.

THe only thing accreditaiton confers that nothing else really can is credibility with people not already familiar with you. You can go to a banker, to a foundation, or to a politician, and say "This museum meets the highest standards of the national museum field--I have my act together--and I have a credential that shows it." This saves them a lot of due diligance. Whether this advantage is worth it is like beauty and so much else--eye of the beholder.

eledbetter@rypn.org

> It appears that using
> a blanket administration . . . is an
> interesting technique used to include sites
> that otherwise would have no hope of being
> accredited . . . How come one administration can do it and others can't?

> Of course, the bigger picture is whether
> such accredition earns its keep. . . I would have to
> question who, if anyone besides the CSRM,
> NCTM, and RRMPa would actually *benefit*
> from such accredition. In a sense, it's like
> tacking more college degree letters after
> you name--maybe it'll help get you a gran;
> maybe that and five bucks will get you a
> Starbucks cuppa joe. What does it mean,
> positively and/or negatively, to the average
> visitors, not the TRAIN/ARM types?

Based on what I've read on this thread, accreditation is much like getting a degree in a University. The journey - self-critique, answering those pesky questions like "what are we doing?", etc., is far more important than the destination - a piece of paper that says "I did this."

A degree is good for very little. An education holds great value. In that same vein, many "railroad museums" would do well to go through the process.

JAC

In many ways, accreditation represents validation of what one has done and hopefully will continue to do. It's one of many indicators that the museum is serious and that it plans to participate within the fraternity of other serious museums.

In a tight job market, many companies won't look at you if you don't have a college degree even though the degree doesn't prove you'll be a model employee. Likewise, in a tight grant/funding arena, accreditation is "good resume material" for an organization looking for donor dollars.

This does not mean that unaccredited museums are doing anything wrong!!!

--Malcolm


malcolmrcampbell@cs.com

Yes, the journey is worth more than the piece of paper that says ACCREDITED, but these days, without the piece of paper, you can't easily prove you went on the journey.

Some people fear the journey because they think it means they're going to have to give up the best of what they have while taking on a lot of paperwork and policies they don't want to deal with. This may not be the case. Yet, if one is afraid to ask "why do we do what we do?" then perhaps they need to get out of the museum business.

If I had a pristine RPO or Heavy Pacific or Pullman Parlor Car sitting in a climate controlled warehouse, I sure as heck wouldn't want to donate it to an outfit that told me, "aw shucks, we don't know if we are living up to preservation or governance standards or not."

--Malcolm

malcolmrcampbell@cs.com

> In many ways, accreditation represents
> validation of what one has done and
> hopefully will continue to do. It's one of
> many indicators that the museum is serious
> and that it plans to participate within the
> fraternity of other serious museums.

Okay, at best this does tangibly represent something that would otherwise be intangible and subject to the mercy of interpretation. But at worst (okay, call me a cynical curmudgeon), it just represents a "class" system whereas snooty-nosed academics say "well, we have the right breeding and you don't".....

> In a tight job market, many companies won't
> look at you if you don't have a college
> degree even though the degree doesn't prove
> you'll be a model employee. Likewise, in a
> tight grant/funding arena, accreditation is
> "good resume material" for an
> organization looking for donor dollars.

Okay--the implications of the previous posts lead me, at least, to believe that the process involved is lengthy, laborious, and probably *expensive* in either manpower or consultancy fees. Somehow, I'm picturing many meetings of navel-gazing introspection, consultants' reports, and mounds of paperwork worthy of a government bureaucracy--and probably a couple pointy-haired-boss types to boot.
For all the work (and money/time) this introspection, review processes, etc. take, has anyone yet been able to demonstrably translate this "work" into tangible increases in such things as donations, grants, increased volunteer labor, etc.? In other words, can someone show concrete results as opposed to "we're a better museum for it because we did it" boosts in self-esteem?

Using the college degree as an example, we can demonstrate with the classifieds of any newspaper the tangible economic benefits of having a college degree, no matter howlittle said sheepskin actually represents in the year 2003. All I ask is for the same type of proof to be applied to museum certification, be it by the AAM or some other body. (For that matter, heck, I could ask whether anyone can show benefits from TRAIN or ARM membership......... but I digress....)

> This does not mean that unaccredited museums
> are doing anything wrong!!!

No it doesn't. And despite my "accusatory" tone posed by the last couple of questions, I'm not saying the accredition process is a waste of time, either. I think any "museum" or operation that doesn't go through such a process of introspection is only living for the moment. (Maybe much like Wall Street companies that only live for the next quarterly statement?)

I'm only asking the same questions any cynical outsider SHOULD be asking of any such "consultant's" proposal to benefit their operation at the cost of much time, manpower, brain cells, and resources. Once the decision has been made, for better or worse, to fire up, say, PRR 1361, is the expense of "certifying" the project worthwhile, or would it be better to just keep grinding rust? <:-)

LNER4472-NOSPAM-@bcpl.net

No, Sandy, to the best of my knowledge no such Return on Investment or ROI study has ever been done attempting to quantify the value of AAM Accrediation according to some kind of outcomes-base metrics. It is very hard to get granting agencies to fund that kind of analysis, and AAM does not have the resources lying around to do it ourselves.

It's also hard to do--how do you prove causality--ie., that it was accreditation alone rather than some exogenous factor that caused the change in whatever you are measuring?

I think for most people who participate in the accreditaiton process the value is in the sequenced, structured review of all aspects of operations accreditaion requires, and in the opportunity eexamine and challenge long-held assumptions and "holy cows." Nothing you can't do by other means, but accrediation provides a structure, a toolkit and a timeline for conducting such a review.

It's also intended to be a capstone event--something you do after you've addressed all the obvious stuff and think you have your house well enough in order to have company over for a look.

As to whether its for everyone, well, clearly not--only 5% of US museums are accredited, and there are certainly many organizations out there that would survive the process handily if they chose to pursue it. If you don't find any of the arguments advanced in favor of accredition persuasive--well, OK! Go in peace to love and serve!

eledbetter@rypn.org

> Okay--the implications of the previous posts
> lead me, at least, to believe that the
> process involved is lengthy, laborious, and
> probably *expensive* in either manpower or
> consultancy fees. Somehow, I'm picturing
> many meetings of navel-gazing introspection,
> consultants' reports, and mounds of
> paperwork worthy of a government
> bureaucracy--and probably a couple
> pointy-haired-boss types to boot. ...

> I'm only asking the same questions any
> cynical outsider SHOULD be asking of any
> such "consultant's" proposal to
> benefit their operation at the cost of much
> time, manpower, brain cells, and resources.

I would refer people again to the full description of the Accreditation Program at

http://www.aam-us.org/programs/accreditation/accred.cfm

In reviewing these materials, note that AAM does not sell any consulting services as part of this program, nor do we recommend any third-party consultants. The program does require committment of resources from candidates, but in general they are internal resources--staff time to complete various evaluations, prepare the submission packet, and so forth.

To reiterate: the AAM Accredition Program is not designed to sell or require the purchase of consulting from us or from anyone else.

eledbetter@rypn.org