On June 26-27, 2015, the Lake County Historical Society received a site visit from Karen Whitehair, Collections Stewardship Evaluator from the American Alliance of Museums. This site visit was the culmination of many hours of work submitting organizational records, policies, practices, and strategic plans. The evaluation served as a planning tool to help us better understand our path to accreditation, an honor only 12% of museums in the nation are awarded.

Many of our community stakeholders were involved in the process of welcoming Ms. Whitehair for her weekend of exploration into our collections, county, and organizational management. Today, we obtained our final report from Ms. Whitehair’s visit. Her summary findings are as follows:

The Lake County Historical Society is on the road to building an excellent collections stewardship program. This organization is blessed with many gifts. They possess an impressive governing board whose members know their responsibilities and are willing to work hard to achieve their goal of AAM Accreditation. The staff and board have built strong partnerships within their community and are eager to reach out to build even more. They clearly understand their duty to provide a service to their fellow citizens of Lake County. A solid effort has been made to institute effective administrative procedures to run the day-to-day operations and document these activities. And it was wonderful to see that many of the stakeholders understand that collections stewardship is at the heart of what they do and want to do the best they can to keep this heart healthy.

In her 35 page report, Ms. Whitehair provided very useful strategic planning steps to be taken in the next 1-3 years, 3-5 years, and 5+ years. Our original goal was to see if we could obtain accreditation in the next ten years, and according to Ms. Whitehair we are well on our way.

If [Lake County Historical Society] is able to maintain this level of dedication and energy into the years to come, I suspect this organization will have no trouble in becoming accredited within the next ten years.

Congratulations to the board, staff, volunteers, and community partners that brought us to where we are today. It’s been a great journey these past 75 years, and we look forward to another 75 years and beyond!