Public and corporate history museums: Common attributes and critical differences

Scope and method of study. This study provides an examination of the purposes, functions and operations of public and corporate history museums. While there is a large body of published work devoted to the goals and typical activities of a public history museum, as well as a few sources which focus solely on corporate history museums, no study has provided a side-by-side view of both types of museums. The intent of this study is to compare and contrast the key similarities and differences of these two types of institutions, both of which are continuing to grow in number and popularity. The information used for this study was collected from various public and corporate museum books, articles from periodicals, oral interviews, and web searches and inquiries. In addition, the writer made use of the knowledge gained from first-hand experience working in both public history museums and in corporate archives settings.;Findings and conclusions. Numerous government-sponsored entities have developed history museums in America, though private corporations have also initiated a significant number of these museums. Several published works exists regarding the mission, goals, and operations of public history museums. Materials and resources of these subject matters for corporate history museums are available, but to a much lesser extent compared to public history museum sources. Seldom have these two types of museums been compared in a single study.