Monthly Educational Program Promotes Museum Relationships

Even without a museum building, the NLEM Education Programs are already underway. We hope that those who have participated in our “Behind the Scenes Collection Tours,” the “Project Citizen Partnership Program,” “What’s in the Evidence,” or the “Federal Agency Brown Bag Lunch Group” would agree that the National Law Enforcement Museum has some interesting activities in the works. By getting our Education Programs off the ground at this stage, we can begin to get people excited about the Museum and build relationships that will be key to its success once the doors are open.

This month marks the one year anniversary of the Museum’s Federal Agency Brown Bag Lunch Group activities. Discussion topics have included information about the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, the role of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department in safeguarding the streets of the federal government and other subjects. With a larger goal of building relationships between federal law enforcement agency historians, history buffs and the Museum staff, an interesting group of professionals finds themselves coming together on the fourth Thursday of every month to learn more about one another’s work.

The format of each monthly Brown Bag program varies. Experts in specific areas of law enforcement history have prepared formal presentations. Relevant news articles have been shared ahead of time and used to prompt less formal group discussion. Later this year, an expert in audio description will share information with staff and stakeholders about steps museum staff should take to ensure a positive experience for a broad audience that includes people who are vision impaired. What each program has in common is that they are fun and fairly informal get togethers. Although it’s a small group now, we look forward to growing the group over the next several months. As our Museum Volunteer program gets off the ground early this summer, we look forward to offering the Brown Bag Lunch activities as a volunteer benefit. If you have a topic to present or are interested in finding out more, please let us know.

Upcoming topics and dates include:
March 25 – The History of the United States Postal Inspection Service, presented by Tripp Brinkley, Postal Inspector Program Manager at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service

April 22 – Presentation on Los Angeles Police Department Chief William H. Parker by Alisa Kramer, Ph.D., from American University

May 27, June 24 – TBD

Bringing the Museum Into Your Home: The NLEM’s Online Catalog

The National Law Enforcement Museum is one of only a few museums that has decided to catalog ALL of its collections—from books, manuscripts, and photographs to oral histories and three-dimensional artifacts—in one database, thus allowing access to all kinds of information about similar materials held by the Museum. In addition, because of rapid changes in technology, the Museum’s catalog will provide access to images, electronic files, video, and other kinds of materials usually only seen in-house. By joining forces with other international online catalogs, the NLEM truly will be a national museum by reaching a broad audience of individuals interested in law enforcement history who might not otherwise know that the NLEM exists.

The Museum’s catalog is now live. We have over 700 books and over 145 oral histories from former Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation now available, and we have an ambitious plan to have complete information—from the history of an object, a photograph of it, and other information that we may have—about the majority of our collection (books, oral histories, photographs, uniforms, badges, etc.) online by the end of 2011.

What kinds of “stuff” does a Museum have? Could we help you identify something that you’ve had in the family for years? The Museum’s catalog might be able to help you answer those questions. It is keyword searchable, so you can type in the words you think might be related to an item. If you want to see what we have related to wanted posters, type those words in and you will see a list of books on wanted posters, as well as historical wanted posters from John Dillinger to Patty Hearst. If you are interested in the Barbara Mackle kidnapping, type in those words—you'll get “hits” on oral histories and a book about the kidnapping. We also have prepared some “canned” searches specifically for the FBI oral histories. We intend to add similar searches for other important topics as well, as we add more of our artifact information to the catalog.

Take a look—the direct link is http://research.nlem.org/.

We would love to hear what you think.