The Roles And Responsibilities Of Museum Boards Of Directors And An Investigation Of The Perceptions Of These Roles In Small History Museums In Oregon

For the type of museums discussed in this paper, the nonprofit organization type, the board of directors is the governing body. The board approves the policies that guide the staff in administering the museum. The relationship between the board and the staff should be one of respect and cooperation; but often the relationship is fraught with controversy and antagonism. The purpose of this study is to examine the duties and the relationships between the staffs and the boards of small history museums in Oregon. A comparison will be made between the ideal duties and responsibilities of boards of directors of a museum as set forth in the professional literature and how those duties and responsibilities are perceived and performed in actual practice as revealed by information gathered from a questionnaire distributed to selected small history museums in Oregon with a staff of six or less. The hypothesis that the board of trustees is a deterrent to the smooth operation of a museum was not entirely borne out by the study. A more democratic view, as discovered in conducting the research for this study, is that boards and staff may be insufficiently trained to understand their respective roles in the organization. To that end, guidelines to sue in development of an orientation meeting and manual are included in Appendix B.