This problem became increasingly acute as park museums and collections increased in number and complexity. The occasional interpreters' conferences could scarcely begin to meet the need, while the Field Manual for Museums was out of print and in some important respects outof- date. Faced with this situation, the Museum Branch opened discussions with the History Division in September 1948 to develop a museum methods training program.11 The training needed to prepare park staff members to take good care of the collections and exhibits entrusted to them, and also to use the museums actively as prime interpretive tools. It aimed to implant clear conceptions of proper standards for museum care and use, teach some specific skills, and stimulate and guide future self-development. Peterson drafted a preliminary outline of content for a four-week course. From his wartime experience as an instructor in bombsight maintenance, Chief Historian Lee insisted that the training be job-centered and practical. Staff members therefore converted the outline into a series of 16 specific jobs with assignments designed to accomplish each.

The Service did not then have an organized training program or a training budget, and funding for the course would be largely invisible. The Museum Branch and History Division absorbed the costs of planning, preparation, and instruction. The branch provided makeshift classroom space in the laboratory where daily contact with curators, conservators, and preparators would have many fringe benefits. Parks sending trainees had to cover their travel to and from Washington along with a modest per diem while they were on travel status. Applicants often had to persuade their supervisors to allot scarce travel money for their attendance. This tended to assure strongly motivated trainees, but not necessarily from parks having the most urgent need. The course also received substantial instructional help provided without charge by the museums and other institutions visited as an important part of the training-the Smithsonian museums, National Archives, other museums in Washington, and later the American Museum of Natural History and Colonial Williamsburg. With such shoestring financing the Museum Methods Course began its first session in January 1949.

The class got underway around a table in the L Street laboratory with enrollment limited to four trainees. One had to return home after three days, leaving museum assistant Vera Craig of Morristown, Fort McHenry park historian Harold Lessem, and Superintendent Raleigh Taylor from Guilford Courthouse as the first students. They spent hours cleaning rust from gun barrels under the guidance of Harold Peterson, who insisted that they use methods and materials that would not scratch uncorroded iron. They learned to distrust shortcuts employing chemical treatments, harsh abrasives, or power tools in the care of these and other artifacts. Ralph Lewis served as instructor for an introduction to museum theory and professional literature, accessioning and cataloging procedures, specimen storage methods, label writing, and exhibit evaluation among other topics. Instructional methods involved reading assignments, class discussion, and visits to observe examples of good practice such as specimen records, storage, and labeling in the Freer Gallery; document lamination at the National Archives; mounting and fumigating techniques at the National Herbarium; and the use of standard storage cabinets at the National Museum.

The trainees responded well to the course, and the Museum Branch and History Division agreed to repeat it with a somewhat larger class and improvements suggested by experience.12 The second session convened in October 1949 with eight trainees plus three from National Capital Parks who attended part time. As one modification in the curriculum the class designed, prepared, and installed a temporary exhibition at Appomattox Court House National Historical Monument. Nearly 18 months elapsed before the third offering in May 1951. Five students participated, one of them the director of the Iraq National Museum of Natural History under a UNESCO fellowship. This class also carried out a temporary exhibition project, an exercise abandoned thereafter because the trainees tended to concentrate on what they already knew rather than mastering new methods.