OHC committed to Excellence

The Oconee Heritage Center in downtown Walhalla has pledge to commit to excellence.  Museums are institutions that the public has entrusted with its most meaningful objects, information, and memories.  The Oconee Heritage Center does not take this trust lightly and will be increasing its commitment to be the best museum that it can, explains Oconee Heritage Center curator and director Leslie White.  “One of our big efforts is to constantly do better, so, one step we decided to take this year was to take the American Alliance of Museums, which is the national kind of standard organization supporting better practices for museums.” White gives the pledge. “This pledge basically says that the Oconee Heritage Center pledges that in fulfillment of our educational mission, we are going to strive to operate according to national standards and best practices to the best of our abilities in accordance with our resources and from there I hope to work on a long range quest to get accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums, which is a very involved process that looks very hard at your management practices, organizational practices and policies that you have in place to make sure that you are in line with being the best up to those national standards that we can be.” It is important for small museums such as the Oconee Heritage Center to adhere to national standards of excellence, adds White.  “A lot of small museums kind of get overlooked sometimes in terms of fitting into that national model but I think we are kind of the front lines on historic preservation and museums in general, so we need to be striving for that all the time.”  Visitors to the downtown Walhalla museum are welcome to ask White about the pledge.  “You can see this if you come into the museum and I will be happy to tell you more about it and it something that we would be very proud to achieve both kind of internally and as something we can brag about in terms of being a more credible organization in the future.”  This fall, the American Alliance of Museums will introduce a streamlined reaccreditation process that will maintain its rigor and same high standards while significantly reducing the time needed for completion.