What Are Museums and What Do They Do?

This video was created for Horry County Schools to learn an overview of what museums do, how they choose objects for the collection, and how they share those collections. Learn about the importance of a mission statement, what a museum's collection can be made up of, and the importance of research and writing panels for public education!
For more information on the Horry County Museum and L.W. Paul Living History Farm visit horrycountymuseum.org.
Spanish and English captions and English transcription provided by a SC Humanities Growth Grant.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Hi everyone. I'm Marian Calder with the Horry County Museum. You might know there are lots of different kinds of museums that we have. There's history, natural history, Native American history. There's museums that are just about art. There's museums just about fossils and nature, and even some that are about air and space. All museums have a mission. So the first thing you want to do when you're coming up with a museum is recognize what is your mission? What's the story you want to tell? Here at our place, we talk about the history, Native American history and natural history, of Horry County, South Carolina. We also have a living history farm where we recreate what life was like during a certain time period here in Horry County. We chose 1900 to 1955 because it wasn't that long ago and we're still able to talk to people who lived during that time.
Now, once you have your museum, you have to fill it with something. So that means you go out and you collect objects that represent your mission. So objects can be a variety of things when you're creating your exhibit. It doesn't just have to be a tool or a fossil or something that we hold in our hand. It can also be an archive. Archives are things like documents from the past. They can be parts of newspapers or letters or photographs that someone took. So think about what helps tell that story with these photographs, with these archives, and even with these tangible objects. You can also use oral histories. Sometimes we might not have the things that represent someone from or something from the past, but we have the person and we have their memories and if we can record that, we can use that as a primary source later on.
As much as we might think something is really cool and really interesting, when it comes to history or natural history, we can't collect everything. We run out of space. So one of the things you have to do is make sure that what you're showing relates to your mission. How does it relate to the story you're trying to tell? Once you collect your objects, you need to be able to tell people about them. So here at the museum, we have different text panels that relate to the objects that are on display. It's important to always keep that mission in mind, but it's also important that you do your research and that you know your sources are good sources. So you look for different materials and objects online or in your libraries or by talking to people who might know about that object or who might have used it. So primary sources, secondary sources are all important when you want to help tell the story to connect why the object helps further your mission.
So when you're coming up with your exhibit, always keep in mind what's the story you want to tell, what objects or archives or pictures help tell that story and what sources support the evidence to know that you're not just making that story up, but this happened. And always think about how you can tell why it's important. History's not just memorizing dates and names and knowing when something happened or who lived a long time ago. It's being able to connect what happened with why is it important? How did it impact our life today? How did it change the lives of people in the past? Whether it was an invention, a food, a discovery, or the acts that somebody did, what connects it to how we are today?
And if you have any other questions about what a museum looks like or what we do or what we have on display, you're always welcome to come and see us. Our museum and our farm are open Tuesday through Saturday, which means you can bring your parents on a weekend and come and check out exhibits, check out our text, go see our living history site, see what museums are all about and what we do, and help connect what life was like to how it is today. You can always also find our KZbin channel. Check out the Horry County Museum on KZbin and you can learn a little bit more about how we do some of our videos and digital history too. Hope to see you soon.