Indiana Historical Society

The Indiana Historical Society (IHS) will develop Local History Partners (LHP), a collaborative approach to training staff in small and predominantly volunteer-operated museums throughout Indiana in the areas of strategic thinking, collections care, and professional museum operations. The LHP coordinator will conduct local collections-care and operations trainings at small and mid-sized museums throughout Indiana. The primary tools of this training will be a peer-to-peer self-assessment process for 90 organizations, and a site-specific collections-care training program for 65 organizations. By training staff to think strategically through the assessment of their own organization and another institution, the program delivers two clear outcomes: (1) growing the leadership skills of paid and unpaid museum professionals, and (2) facilitating the development of sustainable institutional action plans for multiple organizations that will endure through leadership changes.