Museum Storage Facilities and Furniture runs four weeks. To reserve a spot in the course, please pay at http://www.collectioncare.org/tas/tas.html If you have trouble please contact Helen Alten at helen@collectioncare.org

Student Comments for MS202: Museum Storage Facilities and Furniture:
The content was perfect for what I was looking for. Though my class participation as minimal, the materials and information are here, there are links and lots of jumping off points that provide direction in areas I'm more interested in, and I can interact as time permits.

I liked the course content, the online nature of the course, the online chat and the self-paced work. I also liked the upload feature and the ability to re-submit after uploading for a period of time. . I would rate my online experience as a 10

I like that the material is at accessible, and I like being able to look ahead, or review the materials without having to go two or three places (book at home, papers on desktop, lessons in a deskfile). I like the journal feature.

I appreciated how thorough the information in the lectures were and enjoyed the slides which gave "real-life" images.

The chats were the highlight of the course - great to have give-and-take with colleagues and an experienced conservator like Helen. I felt like my specific questions were answered.

I really enjoyed having all the extra readings and references. I truly feel I can use those heavily in the future. The chats were very useful for having some questions answered.


The Instructor:

Lori Benson is an independent museum professional based in Maine. Ms. Benson has a B.A. in biology and a Masters of Library and Informational Science specializing in rare books and archives. She started working at the Minnesota Historical Society in 1990, finishing a grant funded position as the Preservation Outreach Representative. After a series of project positions at the Historical Society, including Assistant Moving Coordinator, she was hired by the Science Museum of Minnesota as their first Collections Manager in 1994. She was Project Director in the Research and Collections Division for the new facility planning and move. The project was published as Moving the Mountain, the Science Museum of Minnesota Guide to Moving Collections. In addition to her position at the Science Museum, Ms. Benson was adjunct faculty at Dominican University/College of St. Catherine Department of Library Science teaching Preservation and Conservation of Library Materials and Archives Administration in 2000-2001. In 2003, she was hired by Texas Natural Science Center, University of Texas at Austin (formerly Texas Memorial Museum) to de-accession their entire cultural collection. She continues to be a University of Texas Affiliate. She has taught museum studies to undergraduates and given many talks and lectures on preservation, deaccessioning, project planning and moving. She is a member of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections and the American Aliance of Museums. In her second life, she is a handweaver.