This may not be the perfect surreddit for this post but I figured that many redditors who are involved with museums and archives probably frequent this forum and can provide some insight.
I just applied for a job as a museum/archive director. Today, I received a call back thay they liked my resume and want to sit down and have a fave to face interview.
My background is in genealogical/historical research, with some GIS mapping blended in. I have published three local history books, and do freelance research for individuals. I have assisted at a museum before. Most of my archival experience comes from the deposition, and organizational n of my local towns records dating back 100 years.
While I feel I make be strong in the Museum, genealogy work they are looking for, I feel I may be weak in the archiving part. This job isn't for a university or big museum, instead it's for a local County Museum and government archives.
I was hoping that some of the ones with experience in this type of field might give me some insight into what questions I will be asked, and what questions to ask them. Anyone that can provide a crash course article or book on museum management or archiving please feel free to chime in. I'm just looking for some insight and some guidance on what I need to know and where to go from here.
(I'm currently a staff-level archivist at a smaller university archives, but my very first internship was at a tiny county museum/archives.)
Honestly I think you're kinda sweating the wrong things here, I doubt they'll ask you a ton of detailed questions on photograph storage best practices, current trends in electronic records preservation, and your opinions on the latest set of revisions to the DACS manual! Unless they have detailed knowledge of these things, and if they're hiring someone to do this for them, probably not!
It's not clear from your post, will you be a Lone Arranger (this is archivist slang for a one-man shop where you do all the work yourself) or will you be supervising people? Any volunteers you will need to supervise? Supervising/management will likely come up if so. Volunteer management is its own beast.
What is your experience working with the public? How will you deal with Difficult Patrons? (crazy people go to archives)
How do you plan to attract people to the museum? How can you get the community involved in your institution? How can you ensure all the voices (read: minorities, race, ethic, sexual, etc etc) in your community are represented in the museum/archives? (Ask this one to them as well)
Does the archives collect records from the community? If so, is it systematic? How do you plan to build community trust/relationships with organizations to encourage them to donate their records? (Think like your local Kiwanis, churches, etc.)
Those are the questions I'd be thinking about. Practical, community-oriented stuff.
Don't look for a crash course in archives/museums. There's no crash course, museums and archives are masters degrees. You can certainly teach yourself everything practical you need to know though, there's lots of professional publications on everything you will ever think or do in an archives (ALA just published a book on dealing with BED BUGS in libraries, seriously everything has a book on it) and you'll just learn it as you go. School of hard knocks!
Museum studies and archival science are typically quite different educational backgrounds (museum studies programs are under the history department, archival science is under the library science department) and I do not have any museum background, so also check out /r/MuseumPros.
Good luck with your interview. :)