A new paper in Curator: The Museum Journal shines a spotlight on r/MuseumPros, the 28,000-strong community on Reddit for people working in the sector. The group’s creators and moderators Blaire Moskowitz and Scott Chamness, who authored the paper, describe the subreddit as a place where museum workers can “develop collective actions, compare experiences in the sector, and strengthen professional networks by voicing their opinions, asking questions, seeking guidance, and sharing skills.”
Funnily enough, that’s exactly what we wanted to write about this week. We’re all about knowledge sharing here at Museum 411, so in that vein, we ask: What are the best online message boards for people working in museums?
Note: Today, we’re focusing more on forums for discussion, not so much job posting, although many of these include avenues for both.
AAM Museum Junction
It’s free to view the American Alliance of Museum’s Open Form, but you have to establish member credentials to post or access any of the dedicated community groups. The Open Forum is a place to share insights, seek advice, collaborate on projects, and find new volunteer opportunities. Engagement in the Open Forum is hit or miss, depending on the topic (a recent request for CRM recommendations got quite a few responses, for example).
AASLH Community Google Groups
The American Association for State and Local History has nine different community group forums, of varying activity level, hosted through Google Groups:
- Climate and Sustainability
- Educators and Interpreters
- Emerging History Professionals
- Field Service Alliance
- Historic House Museum
- History in Our Parks
- Military History
- Nomenclature
- Small Museums
- Women’s History
ASTC Community
Participate in discussions, share resources, and connect with science museum professionals around the world. ASTC members can join the General Forum to discuss any topic, or participate in a Community of Practice to chat about a particular shared interest.
Independent Museum Professionals
IMP offers a community and forum for independent museum professionals for discussion and networking opportunities to support professional development and collaboration between its members.
International Mountmakers Forum
A spot for the folks doing the creative work of making safe and well-made exhibition and storage mounts. Archives are viewable to anyone, but you’ll need to make an account to post.
MaP Bulletin Board
The Museums as Progress forum is for sharing resources and asking questions. You can join this community for free. Here’s their handy prompt list for posts:
🗓️ Check out this upcoming event …
📖 Here resource: Here’s a helpful …
🔦 I want to spotlight @MemberName, who is making progress on …
❓ I’m trying to learn more about [topic/challenge] in my museum. Any advice?
📢 I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on [museum challenge]. What’s your experience?
MCN Forum
A free forum (you don’t have to be an MCN member) for the museum technology community to share announcements about upcoming events, resources, grant and scholarship opportunities, job openings, RFPs, and call for proposals. You can also discuss current trends and practices and find support from peers on a variety of work challenges.
Museum Learning Hub
Although admittedly not the most active on this list, the Ask an Expert forum is for museum professionals, particularly those working in small museums, who are welcome to seek advice or tech support from the Hub’s student technology fellows.
r/MuseumPros
A subreddit dedicated to people who work in GLAMs (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) of any topic. It’s for genuine conversation, and the occasional rant, about working in the sector, and discussions range from “What’s the weirdest object on display at your museum?” to advice on cleaning a taxidermied polar bear. Most recently, there’s actually been quite a bit of negative chatter about the very academic article we referenced in the intro to this piece.
Talk@Museum-Ed
Here’s a forum for discussion, idea sharing, and problem solving for the museum educator community. It’s a public, unmoderated group discussion list, so the interface is a little different. But topics include things like the best writing level to use for gallery text to museum tour policies to YouTube content best practices. From the source: The exchange of information is the key here, so if you feel it is important to the museum education community, go ahead and discuss it!
You can also find message boards hosted by various regional museum associations or dedicated associations, often with job boards as part of the package.
