North Cascades National Park Service Complex - Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve

The Museum Management Plan for North Cascades National Park Service Complex (NOCA) and Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve (EBLA) identifies the museum management issues facing the parks, and presents recommendations to address them. A team of museum management professionals developed this plan in full cooperation with the staff responsible for managing park archives, museum collections, and library resources. The museum and archival collections of the two parks differ in size and complexity. North Cascades collections have been developed over many decades and contain diverse subjects and material types. Ebey's Landing's collections are quite new and concentrate on archeological excavations. The construction and expansion of the Marblemount museum facility gives North Cascades an important role in regional and network museum operations, serving not only Ebey's Landing, but also San Juan Island National Historical Park. As the complexity and amount of work continue to grow, the museum program will require increased levels of support and resources to meet the challenges it faces. North Cascades and Ebey's Landing have many outstanding opportunities for the growth and use of object and archive collections to support their mission and serve the public. Further progress requires management support at the highest levels. This plan calls for a number of actions that are intended to remove obstacles that have stymied the effective management of museum resources for many years. It also brings together additional expertise to address some of the museum issues that have suffered from unintended consequences of past approaches. This Museum Management Plan recommends actions designed to take the park archives and museum resources through a developmental phase that will provide for the documentation, preservation, and management of these park-specific resources.