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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. / Graduation date: 1991

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/38036
Date20 February 1991
CreatorsBrookhyser, Ann L.
ContributorsSkjelstad, Lucy
Source SetsOregon State University
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis/Dissertation

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