News from Leatherhead Museum Committee in 2006

from the Nov 2006 LDLHS Newsletter
Leatherhead Museum of Local History has just been awarded Accredited Museum status.

This is the successor to the Registered Museum status that we have had over the last six years and it has been achieved through quite hard work in demonstrating to the Museums Libraries and Archives Council that we have in place the practices, policies and facilities that meet their exacting standards.

We have admitted that there are deficiencies in our standards of care of the artefacts and in other procedures but they obviously have accepted our proposed programme of work over the next few years to mitigate the deficiencies. However we will never achieve the deadlines or maintain a professional operation unless we develop a team of volunteers in addition to the few who already do sterling work around the back.

For example, we have a list of all the artefacts that are recorded as being in poor condition, and the first stage is simply to physically examine them and see if any conservation is required and thus determine if we have a problem — no specialist skill required, just common sense.

We have secretarial type work sitting around undone. We need a team of volunteers specifically to handle housekeeping duties. We need volunteers to undertake Health and Safety and Fire Safety inspections. These latter matters are mandatory legal requirements and again no specialist skill is needed, we have procedures already established, waiting to be implemented. We need help in the processing of new artefacts — (they don’t get recorded and marked by the fairies unfortunately). It may be that a few volunteers might choose to make a regular time at the Museum say a Wednesday afternoon or perhaps come at other times, whilst others as and when, We are looking for suggestions, and if you think that you might be interested then please let me know, and depending upon the response we hope to call a special meeting to establish arrangements.
Alan V Pooley 01372 374093