Essentials of Museum Management at Davies Manor Plantation

Davies Manor Plantation
Taken by Mandi Pitt-Reed, April 2012

In the Spring of 2012, I embarked on an independent study entitled Advanced Topics in Public History, centered around the essentials of museum management. This course, which required a practicum component, began my formal work at Davies Manor Plantation in Bartlett, Tennessee, where I have worked in the museum archives and as a docent. I am now working at Davies Manor Plantation in a more professional capacity, so am grateful to the course for placing me in this path.

Work Products

• Ledger Abstracts - This is the formal finding aid for the collection of ledgers which I abstracted, cataloged, and preserved for the museum. Part of my goal in abstracting the ledgers was to identify information for interpretation in the museum, particularly about how the commissary operated, the rural medicine practiced by two Davies men, and about the African-American enslaved persons and sharecroppers who lived on the plantation.
• Loose Document Inventory - During the course of abstracting the ledgers, I found many loose documents. According to archival best practices, these were removed from the ledgers and rehoused in acid-free folders in the museum archives. I created a separate inventory of these documents as a secondary form of intellectual control for museum employees.
• Preservation Plan - I drafted a formal Preservation Plan that outlines storage plans and recommendations for the future. This plan reflects best practices in both the archives and museum field and includes references to seminal works on conservation in museum studies.

Course Self-Assessments

• Practicum Journal - This was an essential component of the course, intended to gauge my activity during the practicum. It also helped me to keep pace with my work duties.
• Reflective Essay - This is a capstone essay synthesizing the course materials, museum visits, and practicum experience. In this essay, I reflect on how I have grown as a professional after taking this course.

Museum Evaluations 
As part of the course, I was required to write five evaluations of local museums. I eventually posted these short papers as content on my blog. Read each of them (and see pictures!) at the links below.

• Brooks Museum of Art
• The Children's Museum of Memphis
• The Civil Rights Museum
• Dixon Gallery and Gardens
• Rock and Soul Museum

Book Reflections

I was also required to read several books on museum studies for the course, then write a reflection on each. My reflections are presented below in the order in which they were written.

• Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums by Edward P. and Mary Alexander
• The Engaging Museum: Developing Museums for Visitor Involvement by Graham Black
• Museum Careers: A Practical Guide for Students and Novices by N. Elizabeth Schlatter
• Museum Exhibition: Theory and Practice by David Dean

Me in the boardroom at Davies Manor, skimming and abstracting ledgers

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.