Quarterly report

Quarterly report for the Heritage Museum Society
In the second quarter of 2008 we hosted the Black Pioneers of Oregon exhibit brought to us from Gwen Carr of Salem. We gave special tours to classrooms from Independence Elementary School, Henry Hill Elementary and Coquille Elementary school. We also held our 5th Annual Volunteers Awards Luncheon.

In May Peggy attended the Oregon Heritage Conference, taking workshops on website functions and design; approaches to acting out living history; going green with historic structures and heritage organizations; preserving and exhibiting textiles; the new format for updating our historic resource survey through the State Historic Preservation Office; managing grants and reporting tips; sustaining the size and scope of collections; and planning and management for disasters.

Julie also attended the Northwest Archivists Conference in Anchorage, Alaska in May.  She learned about some great research tools for our archives, which we are in the process of implementing by adding more finding aids within each box in our archives.

In June the highlight was the annual Walking Tour of Homes, which is sponsored by the Independence Historic Preservation Corporation. Residents open their homes inside and out so the public can learn about the history of past residents and architectural elements and evolution of many different eras.

The entire staff is working together to finish the Meyer Memorial Trust grant for $5470 that was awarded last summer to build our website and purchase a research kiosk. The kiosk was purchased last August; we are waiting for the IT guy to assist us with the security of the operating systems. The website will go live by the end of September.

We had 384 visitors during the quarter and approximately 1045 objects inventoried or newly donated.

Respectfully submitted by Peggy Schorsch, Director